Abdul R. JanMohamed has argued that the transformation of racial difference into moral and even m... more Abdul R. JanMohamed has argued that the transformation of racial difference into moral and even metaphysical difference is at the heart of the economy of the central trope of imperialist practice, the manichean allegory. He traces the phenomenological origins of this metonymic transformation ultimately to the 'neutral' perception of physical difference and amply demonstrates the insidious domination of every facet of imperialist mentality of the allegorical extensions of this transformation (JanMohamed 1985:61). With reference to South Africa, Gallagher (1991) has methodically indicated how the writing of Ralph Standish (1612) which represents the Black as a subhuman and mythical Other, is representative of a long tradition of colonial writing spanning the work of John Jordain (1608), Hondious (1652), Kolb (1719), Mentzel (1785), Barrow (1801) and Philip (1828), all aimed at the justification of European colonisation.
The dialectic between history and myth-making is central in Nadine Gordimer's writing on Nels... more The dialectic between history and myth-making is central in Nadine Gordimer's writing on Nelson Mandela. Deeply fascinated herself by the (South African) myth of Mandela as the Saviour, and even apparently occasionally subscribing to it, Gordimer, in her non-fictional work as in her fiction, consistently seeks to illuminate the circumstances that nurtured the myth, while rigorously privileging history and locating Mandela's significance in the province of politics.
��� Irobi (1960–2010) was a prolific dramatist, whose work is frequently performed in Nigeria, th... more ��� Irobi (1960–2010) was a prolific dramatist, whose work is frequently performed in Nigeria, though not often seen outside. He was an actor (notably as Elesin Oba in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman), a scholar specializing in precolonial theatrical heritage, and a performance poet (he published three collections of poems). One of the reasons his work is not widely known is that it was published exclusively within Nigeria. This has obvious ethical merit, but also, given the state of Nigeria’s publishing industry—a brief account of which is given by Diala (24)—severe material disadvantages. In his foreword to Diala’s book, Michael J. Echeruo notes “how deeply disappointed Irobi was that he did not have the benefit of publication in the West to give him a head-start in his writing career” (13). One can think of there being three keystones to Irobi’s work: Igbo cosmology and performance modes, especially dramatic rituals and the tradition of festival dance drama; the example of Soyinka and of Yoruba theater; and the condition of Nigeria as a postcolony. Diala expands on this in his introduction: there is “an iconoclastic reconceptualization of the heritage Irobi appropriates, its fascinating conflation with other performance traditions, and their projection onto the arena of contemporary Nigerian politics” (21). Irobi’s work is nothing if not challenging. In an early assessment of his plays, this reviewer noted that they exhibit “language on the attack, rich in trope and authentic idiom, wise-cracking and irreverent” (Dunton 102). At the same time, there is a risk of overkill, especially in respect of the length of some of his plays and the occasional extreme scabrousness of his satire—for example, his depiction of his fellow countrymen queuing at consulates for visas to the West (Diala 39). Some may, regrettably, be offended by Irobi’s forceful projection of his sense of Igbo-ness: in an autobiographical note provided for the theater research institute
Page 1. De/Stabilising Shakespeare: Revisionings and Adaptions of Shakespeare in the Fiction of A... more Page 1. De/Stabilising Shakespeare: Revisionings and Adaptions of Shakespeare in the Fiction of André Brink ISIDORE DIALA ... This, significantly, is also the pattern of Brink's appropriation of Shakespeare in his next novel, An Instant in the Wind (1976). ...
A continuing trend in the current re-evaluation of the European canon is the adaptation of influe... more A continuing trend in the current re-evaluation of the European canon is the adaptation of influential European plays by writers from 'postcolonies'. Varying in intent, sophistication and methodology, such adaptations are part of the core of the offerings of important African playwrights such as Wole Soyinka, Athol Fugard, Efua Sutherland, Ola Rotimi and Femi Osofisan. A basic explanation for this phenomenon is these writers' recognition of a hidden polemic in narratives, as well as their inherent malleability, which makes re-staging invaluable for both the interrogation of colonial representations and for the invention of a new human image. The endeavour is, however, paradoxical, given the multiple theoretical and ideological implications arising from the colonised or erstwhile colonised rewriting the master narratives of the colonisers or former colonisers.
This article appraises Ben Obumselu’s examination of Christopher Okigbo’s conception of his poetr... more This article appraises Ben Obumselu’s examination of Christopher Okigbo’s conception of his poetry as music as particularly insightful. Okigbo’s intent to make a music of words, evident in his denunciation of poetry of denotative statements, and reverent invocation of his favorite impressionist composers, and of Stéphane Mallarmé as models or even Muses notwithstanding, Obumselu discerns an underlying reference in every poem to events of Okigbo’s life and even to contemporary Nigerian/African politics. This article extends the examination of Okigbo’s poetics by investigating his exploration of funeral African drum music as an absorbing idiom of abstraction consistent with surrealism. Discussing the African elegiac tradition, it privileges in the pivotal drumming event a conflation of lamentation with a rousing heroic tradition that illuminates Okigbo’s practice in “Lament of the Drums” and “Lament of the Masks” and links many of the last poems in Path of Thunder together in significant unity. Moreover, the interpretation of the poems offered here is linked to the trajectory of the Okigbo narrative and the poet’s heroic temper.
Burden of the Visionary Artist: Niyi Osundare's Poetry S cholarship on the poetry of the Nigerian... more Burden of the Visionary Artist: Niyi Osundare's Poetry S cholarship on the poetry of the Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare continues to privilege the social and political content of his work, in addition, of course, to his fascinating appropriation of the techniques of indigenous Yoruba poetry. Introducing Osundare's first published collection of poetry, Songs of the Marketplace (1983), Biodun Jeyifo identified the poet's grand theme as the dispossession of the masses and, more specifically, of the rural producers (xi). In a perceptive and relatively early appraisal of Osundare's poetry, Aderemi Bamikunle draws attention to the themes of "social and political corruption, maladministration and mismanagement, deprivations and oppression suffered by the masses, concern with Third World situations, and concern with poetic art and how it can serve to better his society" (121). In like manner, in their prefatory remarks to an insightful 2000 interview with Osundare, Cynthia Hogue and Nancy Easterlin argue that "the folk traditions of his early life alongside the urgency of Nigeria's political situation" provide Osundare's poetry with "its energizing impulse" ("Interview" 192). Seeking elsewhere for the distinguishing virtue of Osundare's poetry in his preface to The People's Poet: Emerging Perspectives on Niyi Osundare, Abiola Irele notes, not fully approvingly, that the essays in the volume strive to cele-This is the revised version of a paper presented at the Niyi Osundare International Poetry Festival held at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, May 26-27, 2015. My thanks go to Professors Dan Izevbaye and Biodun Jeyifo for typically insightful suggestions, and to Professor Oyeniyi Okunoye and Dr. Cajethan Iheka for materials.
In this article I appraise the aesthetic and ideological implications of the use of the topical a... more In this article I appraise the aesthetic and ideological implications of the use of the topical as source material for literary creation, with special focus on poetry. I underscore how the shared knowledge between the writer and the audience influences the craft of poetry and is equally crucial for the reception of a work of art. I link postcolonial writers’ fixation on the topical to Edward Said’s influential revaluation of Western historiography and privileging of the political in literary scholarship. I demonstrate my thesis primarily by examining selected poems from the anthology World on the Brinks: An Anthology of Covid-19 Pandemic (2020) as an instance of literary responsiveness to a topical global experience. I highlight and appraise the poets’ obvious allusions to, replications, appropriations, and interrogations of well documented discourses on the Covid-19 pandemic as a contestation of imperialistic theories and assumptions, and show how the topical and its discourses fun...
Wole Soyinka's 1986 Nobel Prize for literature was received as a well deserved international ... more Wole Soyinka's 1986 Nobel Prize for literature was received as a well deserved international recognition not only of the distinction of Soyinka's sustained output but also as a tribute to Nigerian and African literature in general. However, given decades of irresponsible leadership in the country, a sober appraisal of the Nigerian cultural and intellectual front twenty years after the Nobel event reveals a shocking impoverishment of the institutions for the production and evaluation of literature. With a collapsed publishing industry and the continuing migration of Nigeria's most distinguished writers and literary critics to the West, Nigerian literature stands the risk of being subject to the dictates of legitimizing foreign agents of literary production and evaluation with the consequent danger of the perpetuation of Western biases of African literary excellence. By its crucial interventionist measures though, the Association of Nigerian Authors continues to strive to ...
The Nigerian playwright, stage director, actor, theater theorist, scholar, and poet, Esiaba Irobi... more The Nigerian playwright, stage director, actor, theater theorist, scholar, and poet, Esiaba Irobi (1960–2010) was the emblematic artist as an exile and a migrant. Born on Nigeria's Independence Day and, as a result, claiming a mystical kinship with the country, he nonetheless equated his life in Nigeria with exile, embittered as he was by the country's embodiment of the typical aberrations of the postcolonial state, especially epitomized by military rule. However, regarding emigration as transcendence and fleeing the country in 1989, his adventures through the border posts of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany revealed each of those countries to be, like Nigeria itself, a provisional station in his endless search for home and hearth. Thus, central in his exploration of his experience is Irobi's recognition of migration and exile as signal tropes of the tragic human estate itself. Given Irobi's typical inclination to formulate an alter native literary ...
��� Irobi (1960–2010) was a prolific dramatist, whose work is frequently performed in Nigeria, th... more ��� Irobi (1960–2010) was a prolific dramatist, whose work is frequently performed in Nigeria, though not often seen outside. He was an actor (notably as Elesin Oba in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman), a scholar specializing in precolonial theatrical heritage, and a performance poet (he published three collections of poems). One of the reasons his work is not widely known is that it was published exclusively within Nigeria. This has obvious ethical merit, but also, given the state of Nigeria’s publishing industry—a brief account of which is given by Diala (24)—severe material disadvantages. In his foreword to Diala’s book, Michael J. Echeruo notes “how deeply disappointed Irobi was that he did not have the benefit of publication in the West to give him a head-start in his writing career” (13). One can think of there being three keystones to Irobi’s work: Igbo cosmology and performance modes, especially dramatic rituals and the tradition of festival dance drama; the example o...
... Osi na ife kwulu, ife akwudebe ya; ayi wenata aka na egbe na mma, ayi akotona oja na ogene na... more ... Osi na ife kwulu, ife akwudebe ya; ayi wenata aka na egbe na mma, ayi akotona oja na ogene na aja-mbene na izu umunwanyi ... his kith and kin" (Fronded 3). Nwannediya's account of the uncanny circumstances of the drowning of her youngest son, Ndubuisi, and the even more ...
Abdul R. JanMohamed has argued that the transformation of racial difference into moral and even m... more Abdul R. JanMohamed has argued that the transformation of racial difference into moral and even metaphysical difference is at the heart of the economy of the central trope of imperialist practice, the manichean allegory. He traces the phenomenological origins of this metonymic transformation ultimately to the 'neutral' perception of physical difference and amply demonstrates the insidious domination of every facet of imperialist mentality of the allegorical extensions of this transformation (JanMohamed 1985:61). With reference to South Africa, Gallagher (1991) has methodically indicated how the writing of Ralph Standish (1612) which represents the Black as a subhuman and mythical Other, is representative of a long tradition of colonial writing spanning the work of John Jordain (1608), Hondious (1652), Kolb (1719), Mentzel (1785), Barrow (1801) and Philip (1828), all aimed at the justification of European colonisation.
The dialectic between history and myth-making is central in Nadine Gordimer's writing on Nels... more The dialectic between history and myth-making is central in Nadine Gordimer's writing on Nelson Mandela. Deeply fascinated herself by the (South African) myth of Mandela as the Saviour, and even apparently occasionally subscribing to it, Gordimer, in her non-fictional work as in her fiction, consistently seeks to illuminate the circumstances that nurtured the myth, while rigorously privileging history and locating Mandela's significance in the province of politics.
��� Irobi (1960–2010) was a prolific dramatist, whose work is frequently performed in Nigeria, th... more ��� Irobi (1960–2010) was a prolific dramatist, whose work is frequently performed in Nigeria, though not often seen outside. He was an actor (notably as Elesin Oba in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman), a scholar specializing in precolonial theatrical heritage, and a performance poet (he published three collections of poems). One of the reasons his work is not widely known is that it was published exclusively within Nigeria. This has obvious ethical merit, but also, given the state of Nigeria’s publishing industry—a brief account of which is given by Diala (24)—severe material disadvantages. In his foreword to Diala’s book, Michael J. Echeruo notes “how deeply disappointed Irobi was that he did not have the benefit of publication in the West to give him a head-start in his writing career” (13). One can think of there being three keystones to Irobi’s work: Igbo cosmology and performance modes, especially dramatic rituals and the tradition of festival dance drama; the example of Soyinka and of Yoruba theater; and the condition of Nigeria as a postcolony. Diala expands on this in his introduction: there is “an iconoclastic reconceptualization of the heritage Irobi appropriates, its fascinating conflation with other performance traditions, and their projection onto the arena of contemporary Nigerian politics” (21). Irobi’s work is nothing if not challenging. In an early assessment of his plays, this reviewer noted that they exhibit “language on the attack, rich in trope and authentic idiom, wise-cracking and irreverent” (Dunton 102). At the same time, there is a risk of overkill, especially in respect of the length of some of his plays and the occasional extreme scabrousness of his satire—for example, his depiction of his fellow countrymen queuing at consulates for visas to the West (Diala 39). Some may, regrettably, be offended by Irobi’s forceful projection of his sense of Igbo-ness: in an autobiographical note provided for the theater research institute
Page 1. De/Stabilising Shakespeare: Revisionings and Adaptions of Shakespeare in the Fiction of A... more Page 1. De/Stabilising Shakespeare: Revisionings and Adaptions of Shakespeare in the Fiction of André Brink ISIDORE DIALA ... This, significantly, is also the pattern of Brink's appropriation of Shakespeare in his next novel, An Instant in the Wind (1976). ...
A continuing trend in the current re-evaluation of the European canon is the adaptation of influe... more A continuing trend in the current re-evaluation of the European canon is the adaptation of influential European plays by writers from 'postcolonies'. Varying in intent, sophistication and methodology, such adaptations are part of the core of the offerings of important African playwrights such as Wole Soyinka, Athol Fugard, Efua Sutherland, Ola Rotimi and Femi Osofisan. A basic explanation for this phenomenon is these writers' recognition of a hidden polemic in narratives, as well as their inherent malleability, which makes re-staging invaluable for both the interrogation of colonial representations and for the invention of a new human image. The endeavour is, however, paradoxical, given the multiple theoretical and ideological implications arising from the colonised or erstwhile colonised rewriting the master narratives of the colonisers or former colonisers.
This article appraises Ben Obumselu’s examination of Christopher Okigbo’s conception of his poetr... more This article appraises Ben Obumselu’s examination of Christopher Okigbo’s conception of his poetry as music as particularly insightful. Okigbo’s intent to make a music of words, evident in his denunciation of poetry of denotative statements, and reverent invocation of his favorite impressionist composers, and of Stéphane Mallarmé as models or even Muses notwithstanding, Obumselu discerns an underlying reference in every poem to events of Okigbo’s life and even to contemporary Nigerian/African politics. This article extends the examination of Okigbo’s poetics by investigating his exploration of funeral African drum music as an absorbing idiom of abstraction consistent with surrealism. Discussing the African elegiac tradition, it privileges in the pivotal drumming event a conflation of lamentation with a rousing heroic tradition that illuminates Okigbo’s practice in “Lament of the Drums” and “Lament of the Masks” and links many of the last poems in Path of Thunder together in significant unity. Moreover, the interpretation of the poems offered here is linked to the trajectory of the Okigbo narrative and the poet’s heroic temper.
Burden of the Visionary Artist: Niyi Osundare's Poetry S cholarship on the poetry of the Nigerian... more Burden of the Visionary Artist: Niyi Osundare's Poetry S cholarship on the poetry of the Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare continues to privilege the social and political content of his work, in addition, of course, to his fascinating appropriation of the techniques of indigenous Yoruba poetry. Introducing Osundare's first published collection of poetry, Songs of the Marketplace (1983), Biodun Jeyifo identified the poet's grand theme as the dispossession of the masses and, more specifically, of the rural producers (xi). In a perceptive and relatively early appraisal of Osundare's poetry, Aderemi Bamikunle draws attention to the themes of "social and political corruption, maladministration and mismanagement, deprivations and oppression suffered by the masses, concern with Third World situations, and concern with poetic art and how it can serve to better his society" (121). In like manner, in their prefatory remarks to an insightful 2000 interview with Osundare, Cynthia Hogue and Nancy Easterlin argue that "the folk traditions of his early life alongside the urgency of Nigeria's political situation" provide Osundare's poetry with "its energizing impulse" ("Interview" 192). Seeking elsewhere for the distinguishing virtue of Osundare's poetry in his preface to The People's Poet: Emerging Perspectives on Niyi Osundare, Abiola Irele notes, not fully approvingly, that the essays in the volume strive to cele-This is the revised version of a paper presented at the Niyi Osundare International Poetry Festival held at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, May 26-27, 2015. My thanks go to Professors Dan Izevbaye and Biodun Jeyifo for typically insightful suggestions, and to Professor Oyeniyi Okunoye and Dr. Cajethan Iheka for materials.
In this article I appraise the aesthetic and ideological implications of the use of the topical a... more In this article I appraise the aesthetic and ideological implications of the use of the topical as source material for literary creation, with special focus on poetry. I underscore how the shared knowledge between the writer and the audience influences the craft of poetry and is equally crucial for the reception of a work of art. I link postcolonial writers’ fixation on the topical to Edward Said’s influential revaluation of Western historiography and privileging of the political in literary scholarship. I demonstrate my thesis primarily by examining selected poems from the anthology World on the Brinks: An Anthology of Covid-19 Pandemic (2020) as an instance of literary responsiveness to a topical global experience. I highlight and appraise the poets’ obvious allusions to, replications, appropriations, and interrogations of well documented discourses on the Covid-19 pandemic as a contestation of imperialistic theories and assumptions, and show how the topical and its discourses fun...
Wole Soyinka's 1986 Nobel Prize for literature was received as a well deserved international ... more Wole Soyinka's 1986 Nobel Prize for literature was received as a well deserved international recognition not only of the distinction of Soyinka's sustained output but also as a tribute to Nigerian and African literature in general. However, given decades of irresponsible leadership in the country, a sober appraisal of the Nigerian cultural and intellectual front twenty years after the Nobel event reveals a shocking impoverishment of the institutions for the production and evaluation of literature. With a collapsed publishing industry and the continuing migration of Nigeria's most distinguished writers and literary critics to the West, Nigerian literature stands the risk of being subject to the dictates of legitimizing foreign agents of literary production and evaluation with the consequent danger of the perpetuation of Western biases of African literary excellence. By its crucial interventionist measures though, the Association of Nigerian Authors continues to strive to ...
The Nigerian playwright, stage director, actor, theater theorist, scholar, and poet, Esiaba Irobi... more The Nigerian playwright, stage director, actor, theater theorist, scholar, and poet, Esiaba Irobi (1960–2010) was the emblematic artist as an exile and a migrant. Born on Nigeria's Independence Day and, as a result, claiming a mystical kinship with the country, he nonetheless equated his life in Nigeria with exile, embittered as he was by the country's embodiment of the typical aberrations of the postcolonial state, especially epitomized by military rule. However, regarding emigration as transcendence and fleeing the country in 1989, his adventures through the border posts of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany revealed each of those countries to be, like Nigeria itself, a provisional station in his endless search for home and hearth. Thus, central in his exploration of his experience is Irobi's recognition of migration and exile as signal tropes of the tragic human estate itself. Given Irobi's typical inclination to formulate an alter native literary ...
��� Irobi (1960–2010) was a prolific dramatist, whose work is frequently performed in Nigeria, th... more ��� Irobi (1960–2010) was a prolific dramatist, whose work is frequently performed in Nigeria, though not often seen outside. He was an actor (notably as Elesin Oba in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman), a scholar specializing in precolonial theatrical heritage, and a performance poet (he published three collections of poems). One of the reasons his work is not widely known is that it was published exclusively within Nigeria. This has obvious ethical merit, but also, given the state of Nigeria’s publishing industry—a brief account of which is given by Diala (24)—severe material disadvantages. In his foreword to Diala’s book, Michael J. Echeruo notes “how deeply disappointed Irobi was that he did not have the benefit of publication in the West to give him a head-start in his writing career” (13). One can think of there being three keystones to Irobi’s work: Igbo cosmology and performance modes, especially dramatic rituals and the tradition of festival dance drama; the example o...
... Osi na ife kwulu, ife akwudebe ya; ayi wenata aka na egbe na mma, ayi akotona oja na ogene na... more ... Osi na ife kwulu, ife akwudebe ya; ayi wenata aka na egbe na mma, ayi akotona oja na ogene na aja-mbene na izu umunwanyi ... his kith and kin" (Fronded 3). Nwannediya's account of the uncanny circumstances of the drowning of her youngest son, Ndubuisi, and the even more ...
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