"We were amused by an itinerant singing-man": Print, Writing, and Orality in Mungo Park's Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa.

This article critically examines representations of West African oral and written literary cultures in Mungo Park's 1799 travel narrative, *Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa*, through the lens of Indigenous-centered and decolonial theories. It highlights how Park's detailed engagement with Mande oral traditions, such as those of jilla keas (singing men or griots), reflects both colonial mediation and possibilities for recovering Indigenous knowledges within a colonial text. The study situates Park's interest in orality within the context of Scottish Romanticism—particularly his friendship with Walter Scott—and explores how Romantic-era debates about orality, literacy, and primitivism shaped his portrayals. Ultimately, the article argues for the importance of integrating non-Western epistemologies, such as the Mande concept of Nyama, into literary scholarship to challenge Eurocentric hierarchies of knowledge, while acknowledging the complexities and limitations of reclaiming Indigenous agency from colonial archives. It calls for future collaborative methodologies involving Indigenous communities to further decolonize eighteenth-century literary studies.