Editing Anansi (section)

=== Oral Tradition ===
Anansi stories were part of an exclusively [[oral tradition]], and Anansi himself was seen as synonymous with skill and wisdom in speech.<ref>See for instance [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/11/sfg/ho_1286.475a-c.htm#|this Ashanti linguist staff finial] in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which relates to the saying "No one goes to the house of the spider Ananse to teach him wisdom."</ref> “The wisdom of the spider is greater than that of all the world together”.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Barker |first=William Henry |url=https://archive.org/details/westafricanfolkt00barkrich/page/24/mode/2up |title=West African folk-tales |last2=Sinclair |first2=Cecilia |date=1917 |publisher=London, G. G. Harrap & company |others=University of California Libraries}}</ref> Stories of Anansi became such a prominent and familiar part of [[Ashanti people|Ashanti]] oral culture that they eventually encompassed many kinds of fables, evidenced by the work of [[Robert Sutherland Rattray|R.S. Rattray]], who recorded many of these tales in both the English and [[Twi]] languages,<ref name="Zobel Marshall 2012"/> as well as the work of scholar [[Peggy Appiah]]: "So well known is he that he has given his name to the whole rich tradition of tales on which so many Ghanaian children are brought up – anansesem – or spider tales."<ref>{{cite book
  | last = Appiah
  | first = Peggy
  | title = Tales of an Ashanti Father
  | publisher = Beacon Press
  | year = 1988
  | isbn = 0-8070-8313-5 }}</ref> In similar fashion, oral tradition is what introduced Anansi tales to the rest of the world, especially the [[Caribbean]], via the people that were enslaved during the [[Atlantic slave trade]].<ref>{{Cite web
 |author      = [[Cynthia James]]
 |title       = Searching for Ananse: From Orature to Literature in the West Indian Children's Folk Tradition—Jamaican and Trinidadian Trends
 |publisher   = Trinidad University of the West Indies
 |year        = 2004
 |url         = http://www.sacbf.org.za/2004%20papers/Cynthia%20James.rtf
 |format      = Word Document
 |access-date  = 16 December 2008
|archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20090105203034/http://www.sacbf.org.za/2004%20papers/Cynthia%20James.rtf
 |archive-date = 5 January 2009
|url-status     = dead
 |df          = dmy-all
}}</ref> As a result, the importance of Anansi socially did not diminish when slaves were brought to the New World.