The Story of the Dress That Sang

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[pic]Anansi
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For other uses, see Anansi the Spider.
Anansi the trickster is one of the most important characters of West African and Caribbean folklore. He is also known as Ananse, Kweku Ananse, and Anancy; and in the Southern United States he has evolved into Aunt Nancy. He is a spider, but often acts and appears as a man. The story of Anansi is akin to the Coyote or Raven trickster found in many Native American cultures.
The Anansi tales are believed to have originated in the Ashanti tribe in Ghana. (The word Anansi is Akan and means, simply, spider.) They later spread to other Akan groups and then to the West Indies, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles. On Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire he is known as Nanzi, and his wife as Shi Maria.
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|1 Stories                                                                                     |
|1.1 How Anansi got his stories                                                                 |
|1.2 Variants of this story                                                                     |
|1.3 Anansi and the dispersal of wisdom                                                         |
|1.4 Other stories                                                                             |
|2 Relationship between Anansi and Br'er Rabbit                                                 |
|3 Mythology                                                                                   |
|4 References in popular culture                                                               |
|5 Other names                                                                                 |
|6 References... [continues]

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