Niyi Akingbe | University of South Africa (original) (raw)
Books by Niyi Akingbe
The thematics of Femi Fatoba's They Said I Abused the Government (2001) and Wole Soyinka's Samark... more The thematics of Femi Fatoba's They Said I Abused the Government (2001) and Wole Soyinka's Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002) demonstrate the potential of art to bear witness to the bizarre, depressing anomie bedevilling Nigeria between 1993 and 1998. This anomie was ruinously orchestrated by the power-hungry military, who annulled the free and fair presidential election won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. This military incursion into Nigeria's political sphere was facilitated by a nebulous nation-hood plagued by contending differences among its federating units. The notorious brutality of General Abacha's regime was a cavalcade of incarceration and killings of real and imagined political dissidents. Especially, outspoken politicians who fell victim to unstable power-plays were kept in detention facilities across the country. They Said I Abused the Government and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known's articula-tion of these 'years of the locusts' is epitomized by the closing of newspapers, brain drain, and the imagery of stasis and displacement. These occurrences are captured by the accusatory tone of Femi Fatoba and Wole Soyinka's poetics as they protest the military brigandage in their works. The essay seeks to explicate how protest and satire have been harnessed to articulate the subversion of nationalism in postcolonial Nigeria. Keywords subverting nationalism – historicizing – horrors of the military – Femi Fatoba – Wole Soyinka
This study is an examination of how selected Nigerian novelists have, through the literary... more This study is an examination of how selected Nigerian novelists have, through the literary imagination, used protest as a mode of expression necessary for assessing the relationship between art, ideology and social consciousness. This study examines the relationship of these three elements within the context of selected Nigerian novels dealing with a specific society struggling within difficult economic and socio-political circumstances. The analytical focus is on six primary texts, namely Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1987); Kole Omotoso’s Just Before Dawn (1988); Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra (1982); Festus Iyayi’s Violence (1979); Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain (2000) and Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2002). The choice of these texts is informed by the fact that their thematic preoccupations and structural concerns are broadly similar. In these texts, the selected writers have attempted to chart a course of communal awareness and social reconstruction as they show concern for the socio-political issues prevalent in Nigeria. In essence, the study takes a close look at the nature of protest, its manifestation in literature and the novel.
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-0668-4, paperback, 276 Pages
" € 59 00 *inkl. MwSt. Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okri's Literary Landscape Fagunwa, ... more "
€ 59 00 *inkl. MwSt.
Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okri's Literary Landscape
Fagunwa, Tutuola, Soyinka and Ben Okri's Literary Landscape
Klappentext des Buches
This book is an appraisal of myth, Orality and tradition in Ben Okri‘s Literary Landscape. Okri uses magical realism as a vehicle to bridge the gap between the European literary tradition and the post-colonial socio-cultural societies ranging from Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific to Latin America. Undoubtedly, Ben Okri has been enormously influenced by Amos Tutuola ,D.O. Fagunwa and Wole Soyinka, who were the pioneers of magical realism in Nigerian literature. Okri‘s recourse to covert criticism of anthropocentrism and its attendant variables which locate humans at the centre of the world is grounded in both The Famished Road, and Songs of Enchantment. The two novels when read as records of the spirit world, in its relationship with the physical world, underscores the role of myth maker in African literature as both a technician and a visionary. He functions within the two roles effortlessly in his quest to gather, evaluate and analyse the materials available to him: words, wood, raffia, road, river, mountain or whatever, which in themselves carry a spirituality or an innate essence. Since forms and motifs already exist in the imaginative locale of such African writer.
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-9877-1, Paperback, 132 Seiten
in den Warenkorb
Freunden empfehlen:
"
Papers by Niyi Akingbe
English Academy Review, Jul 20, 2023
Eastern African literary and cultural studies, Jul 26, 2022
IUP Journal of English Studies, Mar 1, 2019
English Academy Review, Mar 24, 2023
Facta Universitatis Series: Linguistics and Literature, 2013
Metatheatre is a long established theatrical tradition which has been sufficiently calibrated in ... more Metatheatre is a long established theatrical tradition which has been sufficiently calibrated in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, put into a utilitarian proclivity in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, and fully aestheticized in Jean Genet's The Balcony and The Blacks. It is also a tradition which has been successfully exploited in Wole Soyinka's Madmen and Specialists; Athol Fugard's Sizwe Bansi is Dead; Femi Osofisan's The Chattering and the Song, and skilfully grounded in Segun Oyekunle's Katakata for Sofahead. In I Will Marry When I Want, metatheatre is utilised by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii to satirize the duplicitous sloganeering of Christian salvation by the Kenyan Christian elite, in its iniquitous attempt to pauperise and dehumanize the peasants. This paper deals with how Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii have steeped a metatheatre into the interface of politics and religion in I Will Marry When I Want, in order to foreground the hypocrisy of Christianity as underscored by the exploitation of the downtrodden masses, by the land grabbing Christian elite of the Kenyan society.
Cogent Arts & Humanities, Jun 11, 2023
Cogent Arts & Humanities
Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press... more Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
An examination of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah reveals a mapping of exponential growth o... more An examination of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah reveals a mapping of exponential growth of obtrusive racial tension which leaves in its wakes prejudice, acrimony and hatred. The article argues that despite its dialogic engagement with the possibility of harmonizing the varied characters' racial/cultural backgrounds, Adichie's Americanah's experimentation with transculturalism faded in a miasma of morbid biases and despair. This failure has a marked impact on the cultural downturn in the lives of African immigrants and other economic migrants from other parts of the world who are trapped in the social contradictions prevalent in America and England. Through concerted efforts, Adichie negotiated interracial harmony among her characters in Americanah; especially among ethnocentric characters cocooned in private world of hate, snobbishness and recherché referenced by the turbulent contemporary world. Invariably, Adichie as a transcultural writer is bounded by the need to illustrate issues which verge on individuals' intolerance for people outside their ethno-cultural or socio-political backgrounds. Nevertheless, Americanah's transcultural trope appreciates the fluidity of the present age: the confluence of global cultures, the mobility as well as nomadic nature of the 21st-century man and the need to engender a monolithic cultural outlook in a culturally polyvalent society. The paper concludes that transculturalism could only manifest in a globally differing society if the walls of ethnocentrism and racism insulating it collapse. Curiously, transculturalism in Americanah ostensibly failed due to the obtrusive racial intolerance exhibited by the varied characters who appear to have determined to cling to the divisive racial sentiments identified in their attitude.
Diversitate si Identitate Culturala in Europa, 2013
Arguably, Nigeria's transition from the military regime to the democratic rule in 1999 only m... more Arguably, Nigeria's transition from the military regime to the democratic rule in 1999 only marginally altered its political context dramatically. Nevertheless, corruption and mismanagement of her economic potential portentously remain her abiding nightmare. Far from undermining and obscuring the debilitating effect of this negative trend, contemporary Nigerian novelists, poets and playwrights have cultivated and sustained in their literary works, an articulation of a plausible political panacea that demands a complete overhaul of the menace of corruption in the country. This concern arises from the need by the writers, to prevent the masses from reacting against a monumental corruption,that could become a catalyst for political implosion. The desirability of Nigeria's radical political change is posited by Irobi's dramatic fermentation of the Igbo mythopoesis and modern theatre appurtenances. This is an experimentation underlined in Nwokedi, a play which legitimizes the...
Diversitate si Identitate Culturala in Europa, 2012
Tanure Ojaide, a celebrated Nigerian poet, is a writer who is constantly in search for an alterna... more Tanure Ojaide, a celebrated Nigerian poet, is a writer who is constantly in search for an alternative social vision to the degenerating socio-political concerns in Nigeria. Social concerns mediated by orature provide the predominant framework within which his poetry collections have been analyzed. At the debut of his writing career now spanning three decades, Ojaide's entry into the Nigerian literary landscape in 1973 was heralded by the publication of Children of Iroko. God's medicinemen and other stories is his first attempt at writing short stories. This anthology of short stories expresses a deep moral indignation, in its denunciation of the shameful state in which the socio-cultural ethos has been compromised in contemporary Nigeria. This paper evaluates the manner in which Ojaide explores the broad theme of the break-down of social and cultural norms in Nigerian society as exemplified in God's medicine-men and other stories. It also examines how, in the anthology, ...
Alexander Haralambiev (b. 1930) is a lawyer from Belogradchik. Endowed with creative abilities, H... more Alexander Haralambiev (b. 1930) is a lawyer from Belogradchik. Endowed with creative abilities, Haralambiev in his spare time creates small clay figures. His mother, Boyana Stefanova, and his grandfather, Dr. Alexander Stefanov, were people of creativity as well. Here we show for the first time a part of the rich collection of his creations: small clay sculptures. Keywords: Alexander Haralambiev, Belogradchik, small plastic art Казвам се Александър Кирилов Хараламбиев. Роден съм и продължавам да живея в чудно красивия Белоградчишки край. Имам вече зад гърба си 60-годишен стаж като юрист и адвокат. Това е напрегната, отговорна и често стресираща работа. След труден съдебен процес вземам в ръцете си мека пластична глина. Мачкам я, без мисъл и идея какво искам да направя, но постепенно се оформя малка 15-20 сантиметрова фигурка. Понякога герой от приказките, които четях в детството си, понякога красиво младо момиче, понякога митичен герой, понякога карикатури на пияници, иманяри или гр...
Nordic Journal of African Studies, 2013
Literary texts from Africa are seen by many critics as social documents concerned with the cultur... more Literary texts from Africa are seen by many critics as social documents concerned with the culture and politics of the continent. The Nigerian novel ostensibly belongs to this tradition, particularly those that were written in the realist mode. The fictional situations explored in them are often the writers’ response to the often-harsh socio-political realities of contemporary society. In the pre-independence period and the 1960s, issues of colonialism were addressed. In more recent times, contemporary realities are treated in Nigerian fiction – the vexed issues of corruption, ethnic chauvinism, leadership crises and autocratic rule. This paper examines how Okey Ndibe in Arrows of Rain, frontally engages the evils of the latest incarnation of military rule and its civilian collaborators. This is indicative of a shift in theme and concern from the previous emphasis on the impact of colonization and the focus on the historical past to an examination of current socio-political problems...
Introduction When examining a sub-category of literature such as protest literature, it is easy t... more Introduction When examining a sub-category of literature such as protest literature, it is easy to forget the fact that such categorisation often tends to overstress the distinctions that supposedly obtain between it and other sub-categories. As Irving Howe rightly observes, ‘we are hardly speaking of genres at all when we employ such loose terms as the political or psychological novel, since these do not mark any fundamental distinctions of literary form’. 1 In order to properly situate categorisations like these, it must first be realised that the differences which establish them are actually more subtle than they first appear to be. In his foreword to American Protest Literature, John Stauffer states:
The thematics of Femi Fatoba's They Said I Abused the Government (2001) and Wole Soyinka's Samark... more The thematics of Femi Fatoba's They Said I Abused the Government (2001) and Wole Soyinka's Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known (2002) demonstrate the potential of art to bear witness to the bizarre, depressing anomie bedevilling Nigeria between 1993 and 1998. This anomie was ruinously orchestrated by the power-hungry military, who annulled the free and fair presidential election won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. This military incursion into Nigeria's political sphere was facilitated by a nebulous nation-hood plagued by contending differences among its federating units. The notorious brutality of General Abacha's regime was a cavalcade of incarceration and killings of real and imagined political dissidents. Especially, outspoken politicians who fell victim to unstable power-plays were kept in detention facilities across the country. They Said I Abused the Government and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known's articula-tion of these 'years of the locusts' is epitomized by the closing of newspapers, brain drain, and the imagery of stasis and displacement. These occurrences are captured by the accusatory tone of Femi Fatoba and Wole Soyinka's poetics as they protest the military brigandage in their works. The essay seeks to explicate how protest and satire have been harnessed to articulate the subversion of nationalism in postcolonial Nigeria. Keywords subverting nationalism – historicizing – horrors of the military – Femi Fatoba – Wole Soyinka
This study is an examination of how selected Nigerian novelists have, through the literary... more This study is an examination of how selected Nigerian novelists have, through the literary imagination, used protest as a mode of expression necessary for assessing the relationship between art, ideology and social consciousness. This study examines the relationship of these three elements within the context of selected Nigerian novels dealing with a specific society struggling within difficult economic and socio-political circumstances. The analytical focus is on six primary texts, namely Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah (1987); Kole Omotoso’s Just Before Dawn (1988); Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra (1982); Festus Iyayi’s Violence (1979); Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain (2000) and Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2002). The choice of these texts is informed by the fact that their thematic preoccupations and structural concerns are broadly similar. In these texts, the selected writers have attempted to chart a course of communal awareness and social reconstruction as they show concern for the socio-political issues prevalent in Nigeria. In essence, the study takes a close look at the nature of protest, its manifestation in literature and the novel.
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-0668-4, paperback, 276 Pages
" € 59 00 *inkl. MwSt. Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okri's Literary Landscape Fagunwa, ... more "
€ 59 00 *inkl. MwSt.
Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okri's Literary Landscape
Fagunwa, Tutuola, Soyinka and Ben Okri's Literary Landscape
Klappentext des Buches
This book is an appraisal of myth, Orality and tradition in Ben Okri‘s Literary Landscape. Okri uses magical realism as a vehicle to bridge the gap between the European literary tradition and the post-colonial socio-cultural societies ranging from Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific to Latin America. Undoubtedly, Ben Okri has been enormously influenced by Amos Tutuola ,D.O. Fagunwa and Wole Soyinka, who were the pioneers of magical realism in Nigerian literature. Okri‘s recourse to covert criticism of anthropocentrism and its attendant variables which locate humans at the centre of the world is grounded in both The Famished Road, and Songs of Enchantment. The two novels when read as records of the spirit world, in its relationship with the physical world, underscores the role of myth maker in African literature as both a technician and a visionary. He functions within the two roles effortlessly in his quest to gather, evaluate and analyse the materials available to him: words, wood, raffia, road, river, mountain or whatever, which in themselves carry a spirituality or an innate essence. Since forms and motifs already exist in the imaginative locale of such African writer.
LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN 978-3-8465-9877-1, Paperback, 132 Seiten
in den Warenkorb
Freunden empfehlen:
"
English Academy Review, Jul 20, 2023
Eastern African literary and cultural studies, Jul 26, 2022
IUP Journal of English Studies, Mar 1, 2019
English Academy Review, Mar 24, 2023
Facta Universitatis Series: Linguistics and Literature, 2013
Metatheatre is a long established theatrical tradition which has been sufficiently calibrated in ... more Metatheatre is a long established theatrical tradition which has been sufficiently calibrated in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, put into a utilitarian proclivity in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, and fully aestheticized in Jean Genet's The Balcony and The Blacks. It is also a tradition which has been successfully exploited in Wole Soyinka's Madmen and Specialists; Athol Fugard's Sizwe Bansi is Dead; Femi Osofisan's The Chattering and the Song, and skilfully grounded in Segun Oyekunle's Katakata for Sofahead. In I Will Marry When I Want, metatheatre is utilised by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii to satirize the duplicitous sloganeering of Christian salvation by the Kenyan Christian elite, in its iniquitous attempt to pauperise and dehumanize the peasants. This paper deals with how Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii have steeped a metatheatre into the interface of politics and religion in I Will Marry When I Want, in order to foreground the hypocrisy of Christianity as underscored by the exploitation of the downtrodden masses, by the land grabbing Christian elite of the Kenyan society.
Cogent Arts & Humanities, Jun 11, 2023
Cogent Arts & Humanities
Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press... more Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact:
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
An examination of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah reveals a mapping of exponential growth o... more An examination of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah reveals a mapping of exponential growth of obtrusive racial tension which leaves in its wakes prejudice, acrimony and hatred. The article argues that despite its dialogic engagement with the possibility of harmonizing the varied characters' racial/cultural backgrounds, Adichie's Americanah's experimentation with transculturalism faded in a miasma of morbid biases and despair. This failure has a marked impact on the cultural downturn in the lives of African immigrants and other economic migrants from other parts of the world who are trapped in the social contradictions prevalent in America and England. Through concerted efforts, Adichie negotiated interracial harmony among her characters in Americanah; especially among ethnocentric characters cocooned in private world of hate, snobbishness and recherché referenced by the turbulent contemporary world. Invariably, Adichie as a transcultural writer is bounded by the need to illustrate issues which verge on individuals' intolerance for people outside their ethno-cultural or socio-political backgrounds. Nevertheless, Americanah's transcultural trope appreciates the fluidity of the present age: the confluence of global cultures, the mobility as well as nomadic nature of the 21st-century man and the need to engender a monolithic cultural outlook in a culturally polyvalent society. The paper concludes that transculturalism could only manifest in a globally differing society if the walls of ethnocentrism and racism insulating it collapse. Curiously, transculturalism in Americanah ostensibly failed due to the obtrusive racial intolerance exhibited by the varied characters who appear to have determined to cling to the divisive racial sentiments identified in their attitude.
Diversitate si Identitate Culturala in Europa, 2013
Arguably, Nigeria's transition from the military regime to the democratic rule in 1999 only m... more Arguably, Nigeria's transition from the military regime to the democratic rule in 1999 only marginally altered its political context dramatically. Nevertheless, corruption and mismanagement of her economic potential portentously remain her abiding nightmare. Far from undermining and obscuring the debilitating effect of this negative trend, contemporary Nigerian novelists, poets and playwrights have cultivated and sustained in their literary works, an articulation of a plausible political panacea that demands a complete overhaul of the menace of corruption in the country. This concern arises from the need by the writers, to prevent the masses from reacting against a monumental corruption,that could become a catalyst for political implosion. The desirability of Nigeria's radical political change is posited by Irobi's dramatic fermentation of the Igbo mythopoesis and modern theatre appurtenances. This is an experimentation underlined in Nwokedi, a play which legitimizes the...
Diversitate si Identitate Culturala in Europa, 2012
Tanure Ojaide, a celebrated Nigerian poet, is a writer who is constantly in search for an alterna... more Tanure Ojaide, a celebrated Nigerian poet, is a writer who is constantly in search for an alternative social vision to the degenerating socio-political concerns in Nigeria. Social concerns mediated by orature provide the predominant framework within which his poetry collections have been analyzed. At the debut of his writing career now spanning three decades, Ojaide's entry into the Nigerian literary landscape in 1973 was heralded by the publication of Children of Iroko. God's medicinemen and other stories is his first attempt at writing short stories. This anthology of short stories expresses a deep moral indignation, in its denunciation of the shameful state in which the socio-cultural ethos has been compromised in contemporary Nigeria. This paper evaluates the manner in which Ojaide explores the broad theme of the break-down of social and cultural norms in Nigerian society as exemplified in God's medicine-men and other stories. It also examines how, in the anthology, ...
Alexander Haralambiev (b. 1930) is a lawyer from Belogradchik. Endowed with creative abilities, H... more Alexander Haralambiev (b. 1930) is a lawyer from Belogradchik. Endowed with creative abilities, Haralambiev in his spare time creates small clay figures. His mother, Boyana Stefanova, and his grandfather, Dr. Alexander Stefanov, were people of creativity as well. Here we show for the first time a part of the rich collection of his creations: small clay sculptures. Keywords: Alexander Haralambiev, Belogradchik, small plastic art Казвам се Александър Кирилов Хараламбиев. Роден съм и продължавам да живея в чудно красивия Белоградчишки край. Имам вече зад гърба си 60-годишен стаж като юрист и адвокат. Това е напрегната, отговорна и често стресираща работа. След труден съдебен процес вземам в ръцете си мека пластична глина. Мачкам я, без мисъл и идея какво искам да направя, но постепенно се оформя малка 15-20 сантиметрова фигурка. Понякога герой от приказките, които четях в детството си, понякога красиво младо момиче, понякога митичен герой, понякога карикатури на пияници, иманяри или гр...
Nordic Journal of African Studies, 2013
Literary texts from Africa are seen by many critics as social documents concerned with the cultur... more Literary texts from Africa are seen by many critics as social documents concerned with the culture and politics of the continent. The Nigerian novel ostensibly belongs to this tradition, particularly those that were written in the realist mode. The fictional situations explored in them are often the writers’ response to the often-harsh socio-political realities of contemporary society. In the pre-independence period and the 1960s, issues of colonialism were addressed. In more recent times, contemporary realities are treated in Nigerian fiction – the vexed issues of corruption, ethnic chauvinism, leadership crises and autocratic rule. This paper examines how Okey Ndibe in Arrows of Rain, frontally engages the evils of the latest incarnation of military rule and its civilian collaborators. This is indicative of a shift in theme and concern from the previous emphasis on the impact of colonization and the focus on the historical past to an examination of current socio-political problems...
Introduction When examining a sub-category of literature such as protest literature, it is easy t... more Introduction When examining a sub-category of literature such as protest literature, it is easy to forget the fact that such categorisation often tends to overstress the distinctions that supposedly obtain between it and other sub-categories. As Irving Howe rightly observes, ‘we are hardly speaking of genres at all when we employ such loose terms as the political or psychological novel, since these do not mark any fundamental distinctions of literary form’. 1 In order to properly situate categorisations like these, it must first be realised that the differences which establish them are actually more subtle than they first appear to be. In his foreword to American Protest Literature, John Stauffer states:
This study shows how oral poetry permeates the culture and activities of Africans. In almost all ... more This study shows how oral poetry permeates the culture and activities of Africans. In almost all African communities, there are poetic expressions such that poems are sung to express mother/father/child’s emotional state for and at every occasion. These include marriage, age grade celebration, departure or separation from one another, death, farming, hunting, trading and religious celebrations. The paper x-rays cultural configuration with the application of cultural theory to delineate societal transformation.
Oraliture is a terminology that is often employed in the description of the various genres of ora... more Oraliture is a terminology that is often employed in the description of the various genres of oral literature such as proverbs, legends, short stories, traditional songs and rhymes, song-poems, historical narratives traditional symbols, images, oral performance, myths and other traditional stylistic devices. All these devices constitute vibrant appurtenances of oral narrative performance in Africa. Oral narrative performance is invariably situated within the domain of social communication, which brings together the raconteur/performer and the audience towards the realisation of communal entertainment. While the narrator/performer, plays the leading role in an oral performance, the audience’s involvement and participation is realised through song, verbal/choral responses, gestures and, or instrumental/musical accompaniment. This oral practice usually take place at one time or the other in various African communities during the festival, ritual/religious procession
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, 2013
This paper is preoccupied with the delineation of the dialectic of poverty and wealth in Festus I... more This paper is preoccupied with the delineation of the dialectic of poverty and wealth in Festus Iyayi's Violence. The unbridled struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat in the novel constitutes the onus of the dialectical materialism which underlies an axiomatic focus of societal superstructure. An application of Kenneth Boulding's theory of protest to the Nigerian social milieu, poignantly reveals that there is a potent foregrounding of the class stratification between the rich and the poor. The paper will further examine how this dichotomy between the highly placed and the down trodden in the novel has graphically accentuated the poverty index in contemporary Nigeria.
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, Feb 28, 2014
Arguably, Africa comparatively remains a huge repository of misery and violence in the 21st-centu... more Arguably, Africa comparatively remains a huge repository of misery and violence in the 21st-century, an attempt to account for narratives within the context of political development has posed an irresistible challenge and a disturbing necessity for Mia Couto in Voices Made Night (1990) and Bessie Head in Tales of Tenderness and Power (1989). The position of Couto as a white Mozambican writer and Head as an exiled coloured South African writer, living in her adopted country of Botswana, provides them with privileged neutrality from which to view the effect of the admixture of grinding poverty and violence as they ravage the landscapes of these countries. While Couto does not fail to incorporate the significance of power struggle between FRELIMO (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) and RENAMO (Mozambique National Resistance) in the Voices Made Night, Head's articulation of the complex manipulation of power becomes a resource for constructing a discourse of nationalism in Tales of Tenderness and Power. The paper intends to focus on the correlation between power and economic development in these anthologies. The paper will further examine how political power impacts on the socioeconomic well being of the local folks in the Couto's Mozambique and Head's South Africa.