1,720,978 research outputs found
Review of Ruth Finnegan\u27s Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts: A Guide to Research Practices
Get PDFReview of Ruth Finnegan\u27s Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts: A Guide to Research Practices. (ASA Research Methods in Social Anthropology Series, no. 4.) xviii, 284pp. London and New York: Routledge, 1992
\u27The White Man Laughs\u27: Commentary on the Satiric Dramatic Monologues of Gabriel Okara
Get PDFExamined in the present article are two early satiric lyrics of Gabriel Okara—“Once Upon a Time” and “He Laughed and Laughed and Laughed”—which are the products of the postcolonial cultural war environment in which the issues of modernity, alterity (otherness or difference) and afro-authenticity implicated in Achebe’s ripostes on the bigotry of the colonialist critic were central. The tone of this discourse amongst leading African intelligentsia was set in the 1930’s and 1940’s by four fellow south-eastern Nigerian writers in their semi-autobiographical blueprints for African cultural emancipation—Renascent Africa ((1937)) by Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904–1996); British and Axis Aims in Africa (1942) by Kingsley Ozuomba Mbadiwe (1915-1990); Without Bitterness: Western Nations in Post-War Africa (1944) by Nwafor Orizu ((1915–1999)); and My Africa (1946) by Mazi Mbonu Ojike (1914-1956)
‘The Monstrous Anger of the Guns’: Critical Commentary on the War Poems of Gabriel Okara
Get PDFThroughout the Biafran War of Independence from Nigeria (1967-1970), Gabriel Okara remained a committed Biafran. But he was neither an iconoclastic secessionist (determined to wantonly wreck any well-founded order, including the subaltern state of Nigeria) nor a romantic revolutionary (dreaming of a postcolonial African utopia rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the failed postcolonial state of Nigeria), he was a Biafran at a higher level of philosophical and humanist reasoning as eloquently argued throughout his war lyrics discussed in the present paper, whose themes include: commitment, nationalism and pacifism as they pertain to his Biafran experience; modern warfare and the deleterious effects of weapons of mass destruction; death and human suffering in time of war); displacement, separation and exile; hunger, starvation and disease of malnutrition; the social and psychological wounds of war; the interface between religious faith and existentialist anguish; bystander apathy and the indifference of the global community; and the toll of questionable international humanitarianism, dehumanizing interventions and neo-colonialist conspiracies
The African Roots of Michael Echeruo’s Poetry: A Close-Reading of ‘Sophia’
Get PDFThis paper argues that, contrary to widespread opinion, the poetry of first generation, postcolonial, modernist Nigerian poet, Michael J. C. Echeruo, draws some of its core and defining tropes from indigenous African system of thought and symbolism. The much maligned early poem Sophia is subjected to line-by-line close-reading to illustrate this argument. The analysis suggests that, as a matter of fact, Sophia can be read as a portal to Echeruo\u27s poetic corpus as a whole
The narrative war songs of the Ohafia Igbo: A critical analysis of their characteristic features in relation to their social function.
Get PDFWar songs (abu-aha) are by far the most important genre of literature in the oral tradition of the formerly warlike Ohafia Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria. Performed by specialist amateurs on a wide variety of social and ritual occasions, the songs form part of a complex of musical expressions (iri-aha) through which the people's myth of a past heroic age is periodically re-enacted for the purpose of inspiring the young to emulate the commitment of their forbears to the ideal of self-sacrificing service to society in the single-minded pursuit of honour. In this first attempt to analyse the songs as a form of oral traditional poetry, attention is focussed on their most highly developed category, the narrative category. Based on texts and testimonies recorded in the course of field research, the analysis presents the songs as artistic compositions with a distinctive social function which is reflected in the characteristic features of their content, form and performance. It is divided into three parts. Part I (Background and Content) discusses the development of the heroic ideal of which the songs are an expression and its ramifications in the content of the texts. Part II (Language, Structure and the Creative Process) examines the oral formulaic devices used in the presentation of the heroic themes of the songs in traditional poetic and narrative structures which are nevertheless varied by individual singers to suit different audiences in new contexts of situation. Part III (Reception and Evaluation) considers the evaluation of the songs by the Ohafia people themselves and the effect of this on the survival and continuity of the tradition amid social change. The analysis is based on seventy-four texts (Appendix II) and representative examples of these are provided in Appendix I
Achebe\u27s Igbo Poems: Oral Traditional Resources and the Process of ‘Deschooling’ in Modern African Poetics
Get PDFThe present paper examines the diction, imagery and other features of language and style in Chinua Achebe\u27s two Igbo poems ( Uno Onwu Okigbo and Akuko Kpulu Uwa Iru ). Disposing of charges of plagiarism levied on Achebe on account of his modeling of the poems on well-known Igbo folk songs, the paper argues that what is rather involved in the compositional process is a process of deschooling from the strictures of European or Eurocentric conventions of versification. It concludes that a process of deschooling of this kind is one way in which African writers can begin their journey back with undivided attention to the versification conventions of their own cultures
‘The Mystic Drum’: Critical Commentary on Gabriel Okara’s Love Lyrics
Get PDFStructurally, Okara’s love lyric, “The Mystic Drum,” evinces a tripartite ritual pattern of initiation from innocence through intimacy to experience. By comparison to the way of Zen as manifested in the experience of Zen Master, Ch’ing Yuän Wei-hsin, this pattern resolves itself into an emotional and epistemological journey from conventional knowledge (born of innocence) through more intimate knowledge (born of closer apperception of reality) to substantial knowledge (born of experience). The substantial knowledge born of experience empowers the lover to understand that beneath the surface attractiveness of what we know very well (such as the women we love) may lie an abyss (“a cavity”) of the unknown and unknowable “belching darkness.” But experience teaches us, at this stage of substantial knowledge, not to expose ourselves to the dangers of being beholden to this unknown and unknowable reality by keeping our passions under strict control, including the prudent decision to “pack” the “mystic drum” of our innocence and juvenescence, making sure that it does not “beat so loud anymore.
This Was a Man! : A Memorial Tribute to Felix Emeka Okeke-Ezigbo (October 14, 1944-June 25, 2012)
Get PDFA memorial tribute to one of the leading members of the the Biafran war generation of Nsukka poets. Dr. Felix Emeka Okeke-Ezigbo, October 14, 1944 to June 25, 2012
Review of Isidore Okpewho\u27s Epic in Africa (New Edition).
Get PDFReview of Isidore Okpewho\u27s The Epic in Africa: Towards a Poetics of the Oral Performance. [Revised paperback edition.] xvii, 288 pp. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991
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