Much has been written in the West about sex and gender in the last one hundred years. It is perha... more Much has been written in the West about sex and gender in the last one hundred years. It is perhaps to be expected that characteristic Western dualist approaches on this topic be quite different from the Chinese organic approach implied in yin and yang. Owing, evidently, to different socio-cultural worldviews, gender inequality, feminism and patriarchy are the subjects of very different definitions in the West and in China/Asia. Where the former underscores opposition between the genders’ different realities and advocates for “diametric equality”, the latter emphasises complementarity and is thus more predisposed to consider gender difference in what might be called “symbiotic inequality”. Thus, it would be misleading to assume that researchers around the world readily accept Western paradigms regarding this issue. Using a sociological method, this essay aims to establish that concepts like patriarchy and feminism are not subject to unanimous presumptions based on Western models, an...
Lwati: a journal of contemporary research, Nov 13, 2018
Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun and Amma Darko's Beyond the Horizon are... more Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun and Amma Darko's Beyond the Horizon are similar in many ways. They both focus on characters whose everyday peaceful lives are overturned by tragic events: in Half of a Yellow Sun, these include brutal war and its antecedent starvation, sickness, loss of properties, beloved family members and friends, squalor, and even death; on the other hand, in Beyond the Horizon, we witness forced marriage, domestic brutalization, rape, and sex-slavery. The texts capture what it could mean for existence to hang or dangle from edge to edge, from the height of peace and seeming happiness to one of unhappiness and near-extermination. However, as the symbolic meanings of " beyond the horizon " and " half of a yellow sun " signify, the texts are about survival, endurance, perseverance, hope, courage, and defiance. Echoing the Nigerian civil war, Half of a Yellow Sun portrays characters who are involved in a struggle for self-determination in the face of ethnocide, and who, being beaten hands down, accept what they cannot change, and in the spirit of tragic optimism venture to make the best out of life. Like Adichie's Olanna, Odenigbo, Ugwu, Kainene, Madu, etc. all of whom encounter losses, defeats, and failures, Darko's protagonist Mara is an epitome of what it means to remain optimistic under harsh conditions, and to creatively turn life's negative aspects into something positive or constructive. This paper adopts existential psychotherapy in exploring tragic optimism along two axes, the personal and the communal, in the primary texts.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2017
Richard Wright’s Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting... more Richard Wright’s Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting its existence as a literary construct. Such readings gear towards identifying the text with such societal ills as racism and environmental impact on the individual, as if these are the only business of the text.In this paper, however, attention shifts from such external referents to the text itself, deconstructing the meaning of blindness already ascribed to the text as well as the meaning of silence as it is denotatively known. The uncovering of the textual meaning of each of these concepts will also serve either to compliment a character or to disparage same, and then the interweave of both concepts will result in reading the text as a tragedy. This study will be anchored on the provisions of Derrida’s deconstructive criticism.
Second language learning requires conscious and persistent efforts on the part of the learner, to... more Second language learning requires conscious and persistent efforts on the part of the learner, to achieve significant proficiency. Generally, students show complacency towards learning a new language, as a result of frustrating factors such as unfamiliar vocabularies, mixing words with different textual meanings, difficulties in adopting the mechanics of effective writing and others. The dictionary as a learning resource, helps in ameliorating these challenges; serving as a complementary aid for learners, and even teachers in the choice of pedagogic strategies. The methodology adopts a quantitative design in assessing the effectiveness of the use of dictionaries, amongst secondary school teachers and students in Nigeria, using appropriate questionnaires. The result revealed the indispensable role of the dictionary as a learning resource in an ESL environment, and its maximal benefits when students are proactively trained to use it.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2018
Literary theories have arisen to address some perceived needs in the critical appreciation of lit... more Literary theories have arisen to address some perceived needs in the critical appreciation of literature but flipside theory is a novelty that fills a gap in literary theory. By means of a critical look at some literary theories particularly Formalism, Marxism, structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminism but also Queer theory, New Criticism, New Historicism, postcolonialism, and reader-response, this essay establishes that a gap exists, which is the lack of a literary theory that laser-focuses on depictions of victims of social existence (people who simply for reasons of where and when they are born, where they reside and other unforeseen circumstances are pushed to the margins). Flipside criticism investigates whether such people are depicted as main characters in works of literature, and if so, how they impact society in very decisive ways such as causing the rise or fall of some important people, groups or social dynamics while still characterized as flipside ...
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
Despite the century and three-decade gap between them, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s Houseand Zainabu J... more Despite the century and three-decade gap between them, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s Houseand Zainabu Jallo’s Onions Make Us Cry have often been studied for their indebtedness to two movements that have shaped human history and conditioned contemporary thoughts: the former as a play that inaugurates the modernist discuss in literature and pioneered the feminist subject, and the latter expressively reflecting this gender-based discourse. However, the position of this study is that aside the woman question, the texts share some other important elements. They both provoke the question of being and existence: the being of human reality and of truth. In Ibsen and Jallo, we witness Nora’s and Malinda’s experience of existential structures, their perspectival grappling with the perceptual realities of their existence, the psychological alteration that comes with this ontic awareness, and how the perception of ‘what is’ moves one to revolt against ‘what has been’. The plays are seen as capturing ...
The radical dimension of Sam Ukala’s plays appears to have been captured by a good number of crit... more The radical dimension of Sam Ukala’s plays appears to have been captured by a good number of critics, whether this radicality is located in his experimentation with a new theatre soused in the folktale tradition, or conceptualised as the drive for a new society. There is, however, a major gap in all these articulations, and that is the absence of a detailed theorization of the place of evil within Ukala’s radical theatre. Consequently, what we intend to prove here is that Sam Ukala’s plays are not only representations of evil but also representations of the possibility of exorcising evil, that is, the possibility of conquering evil. We argue that it is through this portrayal of the ability of the human agent (typified sometimes as the suffering masses) to overcome evil that Sam Ukala’s plays can be said to be radical or have what Ogu-Raphael has identified as a ‘revolutionary tendency’ (164). The perspectives of evil in this essay will be drawn mainly from the works of such thinkers...
International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Review, 2017
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, are notable work... more Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, are notable works of great literatures, this is not in the sense of perceived beauty but for their ability to attract serious attention. Aristotle has warned us that the artwork is something more philosophical and worthy of serious attention. Literature reviews on the work have been able to uncover layers of meaning in the work. Some also have been able to locate the work within a literary convention, like ‘postmodernism’, and all of that. The paper under discourse is preoccupied to read both texts in the framework of modernism, exposing the conventionalities of modernity located in the work, like the questioning of authority and the final departure of some characters like Nora in A Doll’s House and Vivie in Mrs Warren’s Profession. It is so that we are able to also establish departure as forming a pattern of structuration in modernist plays.
Human beings are conscious to recognize not only the world around them but themselves, in turn se... more Human beings are conscious to recognize not only the world around them but themselves, in turn self-consciousness. This is when an individual consciously knows and understands their character, feelings, motives, desires and their environment through their bodies, sensory organs and activities. It can also be seen as an ideology or concept or literary phenomenon that expresses that an understanding of oneself is not only about the society the individual found himself/herself but the person’s self. It is not just something that merely happens to be himself/herself but rather being aware of himself/herself as himself/herself. Hence makes the individual to be aware that they are object and subject of consciousness or awareness. This study builds from the existing studies which have recently established that literary writers implicitly or explicitly treat self-consciousness while presenting human experiences. Therefore, in respect to the previous or existing studies, the study mainly aim...
Oil on Water is Helon Habilla's third novel, published in 2010. It has, like his other works,... more Oil on Water is Helon Habilla's third novel, published in 2010. It has, like his other works, attracted a handful of attention ranging from reviews, commentaries to critical essays. Much of this attention is sociologically and eco-critically oriented, in terms of the truth of environmental degradation in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and the accompanying restive activities by youths of the region. This essay seeks to take a different approach at studying the text. It proposes, contrary to other approaches, to look at the text at the mythic level, that is, the level where literature stands out from not-literature. Precisely, it attempts to discuss the novel as a quest narrative using archetypal criticism as the theoretical frame. This theoretical approach differs from other approaches that have been used in the study of this novel in that it is essentially a text oriented approach.
Human migration is not something new in human history; it is as old as human history itself. Righ... more Human migration is not something new in human history; it is as old as human history itself. Right from ancient times, mankind has moved from one country to another in search of food and shelter. In modern era, the wave of human migration has increased due to some factors such as political instability, war, and starvation caused by natural disaster. This experience of dislocation has given rise to a new body of knowledge known as migration study. In literary discourse, migration study which studies immigrant experience has received wide attention in literary discourse of Caribbean, Indian and Latino literature. In Nigerian literature, immigrant experience has not received sufficient critical discussion. Consequently, this paper examines Nigerian immigrant experience, the sense of crisis, upheaval and up rootedness that Nigerian characters experience in America and Europe. This study will focus on two aspects of Nigerian immigrant experience namely: racial discrimination and economic...
No doubt, metaphors in Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah have excited much critical at... more No doubt, metaphors in Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah have excited much critical attention. Such attention is however not surprising given that metaphors in the text are so pervasive that they cannot escape notice, not even by naive and disinterested readers. The pervasiveness itself is thanks to the quantity and quality of those metaphors. A lot have therefore been written about them. One is nevertheless encouraged to take up their study again on the belief that something new will always be found about them. At any rate, has Northrop Frye not taught that a work of literature is 'inexhaustible' and therefore a 'source of new critical discovery?' This paper therefore seeks to study metaphors in the text via 'Depth Semantics': a poetics that is primarily Ricoeurian. The aim is to (through the practice of close-reading) treat those metaphors with the seriousness they deserve, since a true study of such metaphors as contained in the text is best do...
Defining African identity gave rise to varied fields of studies such as African Literature and Af... more Defining African identity gave rise to varied fields of studies such as African Literature and African Philosophy. From its inception, men and women with bias in modernist presuppositions shaped it. A new way of literary interpretation – post-structuralism – has been presented, attracting much negative reactions that literary studies centres in Africa are not insulated. The passion for the real/truth of a literary work, a major heritage of modernist thought has thus coloured literary discourse in Africa. This paper examines how this search for the real (or truth) has manifested in literary works via Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive strategy.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, Nov 30, 2019
A literary work fascinates scholars and critics in different ways which may be based on literary ... more A literary work fascinates scholars and critics in different ways which may be based on literary experience or interest. In whichever perspective, literature engages the mind with multiplicity of interpretations. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Akwanya’s Orimili have been studied in varied ways but no study, as far as this research is concerned, has looked at either or both texts from the view of configuration of the myth of Sisyphus. Here is a reading that intends to look at the mythic patterns in the two works with respect to the characters of Santiago and Ekwenze Orimili, the protagonists. In the study, attempt is made to define the Sisyphean features, and establish how the patterns are configured in the two texts. The study uses the tool of archetypal criticism, from the perspectives of Northrop Frye, to examine these similar discursive formations in the texts. The study establishes that mythic thinking gives literature rootedness in tradition, and universal appeal.
The demonization and consequent marginalization of African indigenous religious practices by the ... more The demonization and consequent marginalization of African indigenous religious practices by the colonial West has indeed led to the erosion of African values. Despite the terrors orchestrated by alien religions across the globe in general and Africa in particular, only a few scholars have called for the demarginalization of indigenous African spirituality as a means of rebuilding the man and his world. For instance, Soyinka, one of Africa’s foremost literary scholars has contended that African spirituality has been marginalized by the aggressive, often bloody intrusion of Christianity and Islam on African soil. And for him, African spirituality provides sources of spiritual strength to its people and acts as rallying point in their struggle for liberation and human dignity. In its attempt to further this line of thought, this paper argues that African indigenous deities have been misrepresented, demonized and pushed outside the margins of the continent’s discourse of spirituality b...
Richard Wright's Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting... more Richard Wright's Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting its existence as a literary construct. Such readings gear towards identifying the text with such societal ills as racism and environmental impact on the individual, as if these are the only business of the text.In this paper, however, attention shifts from such external referents to the text itself, deconstructing the meaning of blindness already ascribed to the text as well as the meaning of silence as it is denotatively known. The uncovering of the textual meaning of each of these concepts will also serve either to compliment a character or to disparage same, and then the interweave of both concepts will result in reading the text as a tragedy. This study will be anchored on the provisions of Derrida's deconstructive criticism.
Much has been written in the West about sex and gender in the last one hundred years. It is perha... more Much has been written in the West about sex and gender in the last one hundred years. It is perhaps to be expected that characteristic Western dualist approaches on this topic be quite different from the Chinese organic approach implied in yin and yang. Owing, evidently, to different socio-cultural worldviews, gender inequality, feminism and patriarchy are the subjects of very different definitions in the West and in China/Asia. Where the former underscores opposition between the genders’ different realities and advocates for “diametric equality”, the latter emphasises complementarity and is thus more predisposed to consider gender difference in what might be called “symbiotic inequality”. Thus, it would be misleading to assume that researchers around the world readily accept Western paradigms regarding this issue. Using a sociological method, this essay aims to establish that concepts like patriarchy and feminism are not subject to unanimous presumptions based on Western models, an...
Lwati: a journal of contemporary research, Nov 13, 2018
Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun and Amma Darko's Beyond the Horizon are... more Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun and Amma Darko's Beyond the Horizon are similar in many ways. They both focus on characters whose everyday peaceful lives are overturned by tragic events: in Half of a Yellow Sun, these include brutal war and its antecedent starvation, sickness, loss of properties, beloved family members and friends, squalor, and even death; on the other hand, in Beyond the Horizon, we witness forced marriage, domestic brutalization, rape, and sex-slavery. The texts capture what it could mean for existence to hang or dangle from edge to edge, from the height of peace and seeming happiness to one of unhappiness and near-extermination. However, as the symbolic meanings of " beyond the horizon " and " half of a yellow sun " signify, the texts are about survival, endurance, perseverance, hope, courage, and defiance. Echoing the Nigerian civil war, Half of a Yellow Sun portrays characters who are involved in a struggle for self-determination in the face of ethnocide, and who, being beaten hands down, accept what they cannot change, and in the spirit of tragic optimism venture to make the best out of life. Like Adichie's Olanna, Odenigbo, Ugwu, Kainene, Madu, etc. all of whom encounter losses, defeats, and failures, Darko's protagonist Mara is an epitome of what it means to remain optimistic under harsh conditions, and to creatively turn life's negative aspects into something positive or constructive. This paper adopts existential psychotherapy in exploring tragic optimism along two axes, the personal and the communal, in the primary texts.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2017
Richard Wright’s Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting... more Richard Wright’s Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting its existence as a literary construct. Such readings gear towards identifying the text with such societal ills as racism and environmental impact on the individual, as if these are the only business of the text.In this paper, however, attention shifts from such external referents to the text itself, deconstructing the meaning of blindness already ascribed to the text as well as the meaning of silence as it is denotatively known. The uncovering of the textual meaning of each of these concepts will also serve either to compliment a character or to disparage same, and then the interweave of both concepts will result in reading the text as a tragedy. This study will be anchored on the provisions of Derrida’s deconstructive criticism.
Second language learning requires conscious and persistent efforts on the part of the learner, to... more Second language learning requires conscious and persistent efforts on the part of the learner, to achieve significant proficiency. Generally, students show complacency towards learning a new language, as a result of frustrating factors such as unfamiliar vocabularies, mixing words with different textual meanings, difficulties in adopting the mechanics of effective writing and others. The dictionary as a learning resource, helps in ameliorating these challenges; serving as a complementary aid for learners, and even teachers in the choice of pedagogic strategies. The methodology adopts a quantitative design in assessing the effectiveness of the use of dictionaries, amongst secondary school teachers and students in Nigeria, using appropriate questionnaires. The result revealed the indispensable role of the dictionary as a learning resource in an ESL environment, and its maximal benefits when students are proactively trained to use it.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 2018
Literary theories have arisen to address some perceived needs in the critical appreciation of lit... more Literary theories have arisen to address some perceived needs in the critical appreciation of literature but flipside theory is a novelty that fills a gap in literary theory. By means of a critical look at some literary theories particularly Formalism, Marxism, structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and feminism but also Queer theory, New Criticism, New Historicism, postcolonialism, and reader-response, this essay establishes that a gap exists, which is the lack of a literary theory that laser-focuses on depictions of victims of social existence (people who simply for reasons of where and when they are born, where they reside and other unforeseen circumstances are pushed to the margins). Flipside criticism investigates whether such people are depicted as main characters in works of literature, and if so, how they impact society in very decisive ways such as causing the rise or fall of some important people, groups or social dynamics while still characterized as flipside ...
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
Despite the century and three-decade gap between them, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s Houseand Zainabu J... more Despite the century and three-decade gap between them, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s Houseand Zainabu Jallo’s Onions Make Us Cry have often been studied for their indebtedness to two movements that have shaped human history and conditioned contemporary thoughts: the former as a play that inaugurates the modernist discuss in literature and pioneered the feminist subject, and the latter expressively reflecting this gender-based discourse. However, the position of this study is that aside the woman question, the texts share some other important elements. They both provoke the question of being and existence: the being of human reality and of truth. In Ibsen and Jallo, we witness Nora’s and Malinda’s experience of existential structures, their perspectival grappling with the perceptual realities of their existence, the psychological alteration that comes with this ontic awareness, and how the perception of ‘what is’ moves one to revolt against ‘what has been’. The plays are seen as capturing ...
The radical dimension of Sam Ukala’s plays appears to have been captured by a good number of crit... more The radical dimension of Sam Ukala’s plays appears to have been captured by a good number of critics, whether this radicality is located in his experimentation with a new theatre soused in the folktale tradition, or conceptualised as the drive for a new society. There is, however, a major gap in all these articulations, and that is the absence of a detailed theorization of the place of evil within Ukala’s radical theatre. Consequently, what we intend to prove here is that Sam Ukala’s plays are not only representations of evil but also representations of the possibility of exorcising evil, that is, the possibility of conquering evil. We argue that it is through this portrayal of the ability of the human agent (typified sometimes as the suffering masses) to overcome evil that Sam Ukala’s plays can be said to be radical or have what Ogu-Raphael has identified as a ‘revolutionary tendency’ (164). The perspectives of evil in this essay will be drawn mainly from the works of such thinkers...
International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Review, 2017
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, are notable work... more Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, are notable works of great literatures, this is not in the sense of perceived beauty but for their ability to attract serious attention. Aristotle has warned us that the artwork is something more philosophical and worthy of serious attention. Literature reviews on the work have been able to uncover layers of meaning in the work. Some also have been able to locate the work within a literary convention, like ‘postmodernism’, and all of that. The paper under discourse is preoccupied to read both texts in the framework of modernism, exposing the conventionalities of modernity located in the work, like the questioning of authority and the final departure of some characters like Nora in A Doll’s House and Vivie in Mrs Warren’s Profession. It is so that we are able to also establish departure as forming a pattern of structuration in modernist plays.
Human beings are conscious to recognize not only the world around them but themselves, in turn se... more Human beings are conscious to recognize not only the world around them but themselves, in turn self-consciousness. This is when an individual consciously knows and understands their character, feelings, motives, desires and their environment through their bodies, sensory organs and activities. It can also be seen as an ideology or concept or literary phenomenon that expresses that an understanding of oneself is not only about the society the individual found himself/herself but the person’s self. It is not just something that merely happens to be himself/herself but rather being aware of himself/herself as himself/herself. Hence makes the individual to be aware that they are object and subject of consciousness or awareness. This study builds from the existing studies which have recently established that literary writers implicitly or explicitly treat self-consciousness while presenting human experiences. Therefore, in respect to the previous or existing studies, the study mainly aim...
Oil on Water is Helon Habilla's third novel, published in 2010. It has, like his other works,... more Oil on Water is Helon Habilla's third novel, published in 2010. It has, like his other works, attracted a handful of attention ranging from reviews, commentaries to critical essays. Much of this attention is sociologically and eco-critically oriented, in terms of the truth of environmental degradation in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and the accompanying restive activities by youths of the region. This essay seeks to take a different approach at studying the text. It proposes, contrary to other approaches, to look at the text at the mythic level, that is, the level where literature stands out from not-literature. Precisely, it attempts to discuss the novel as a quest narrative using archetypal criticism as the theoretical frame. This theoretical approach differs from other approaches that have been used in the study of this novel in that it is essentially a text oriented approach.
Human migration is not something new in human history; it is as old as human history itself. Righ... more Human migration is not something new in human history; it is as old as human history itself. Right from ancient times, mankind has moved from one country to another in search of food and shelter. In modern era, the wave of human migration has increased due to some factors such as political instability, war, and starvation caused by natural disaster. This experience of dislocation has given rise to a new body of knowledge known as migration study. In literary discourse, migration study which studies immigrant experience has received wide attention in literary discourse of Caribbean, Indian and Latino literature. In Nigerian literature, immigrant experience has not received sufficient critical discussion. Consequently, this paper examines Nigerian immigrant experience, the sense of crisis, upheaval and up rootedness that Nigerian characters experience in America and Europe. This study will focus on two aspects of Nigerian immigrant experience namely: racial discrimination and economic...
No doubt, metaphors in Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah have excited much critical at... more No doubt, metaphors in Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah have excited much critical attention. Such attention is however not surprising given that metaphors in the text are so pervasive that they cannot escape notice, not even by naive and disinterested readers. The pervasiveness itself is thanks to the quantity and quality of those metaphors. A lot have therefore been written about them. One is nevertheless encouraged to take up their study again on the belief that something new will always be found about them. At any rate, has Northrop Frye not taught that a work of literature is 'inexhaustible' and therefore a 'source of new critical discovery?' This paper therefore seeks to study metaphors in the text via 'Depth Semantics': a poetics that is primarily Ricoeurian. The aim is to (through the practice of close-reading) treat those metaphors with the seriousness they deserve, since a true study of such metaphors as contained in the text is best do...
Defining African identity gave rise to varied fields of studies such as African Literature and Af... more Defining African identity gave rise to varied fields of studies such as African Literature and African Philosophy. From its inception, men and women with bias in modernist presuppositions shaped it. A new way of literary interpretation – post-structuralism – has been presented, attracting much negative reactions that literary studies centres in Africa are not insulated. The passion for the real/truth of a literary work, a major heritage of modernist thought has thus coloured literary discourse in Africa. This paper examines how this search for the real (or truth) has manifested in literary works via Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive strategy.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, Nov 30, 2019
A literary work fascinates scholars and critics in different ways which may be based on literary ... more A literary work fascinates scholars and critics in different ways which may be based on literary experience or interest. In whichever perspective, literature engages the mind with multiplicity of interpretations. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Akwanya’s Orimili have been studied in varied ways but no study, as far as this research is concerned, has looked at either or both texts from the view of configuration of the myth of Sisyphus. Here is a reading that intends to look at the mythic patterns in the two works with respect to the characters of Santiago and Ekwenze Orimili, the protagonists. In the study, attempt is made to define the Sisyphean features, and establish how the patterns are configured in the two texts. The study uses the tool of archetypal criticism, from the perspectives of Northrop Frye, to examine these similar discursive formations in the texts. The study establishes that mythic thinking gives literature rootedness in tradition, and universal appeal.
The demonization and consequent marginalization of African indigenous religious practices by the ... more The demonization and consequent marginalization of African indigenous religious practices by the colonial West has indeed led to the erosion of African values. Despite the terrors orchestrated by alien religions across the globe in general and Africa in particular, only a few scholars have called for the demarginalization of indigenous African spirituality as a means of rebuilding the man and his world. For instance, Soyinka, one of Africa’s foremost literary scholars has contended that African spirituality has been marginalized by the aggressive, often bloody intrusion of Christianity and Islam on African soil. And for him, African spirituality provides sources of spiritual strength to its people and acts as rallying point in their struggle for liberation and human dignity. In its attempt to further this line of thought, this paper argues that African indigenous deities have been misrepresented, demonized and pushed outside the margins of the continent’s discourse of spirituality b...
Richard Wright's Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting... more Richard Wright's Native Son has often been read as a socially-oriented text, seemingly neglecting its existence as a literary construct. Such readings gear towards identifying the text with such societal ills as racism and environmental impact on the individual, as if these are the only business of the text.In this paper, however, attention shifts from such external referents to the text itself, deconstructing the meaning of blindness already ascribed to the text as well as the meaning of silence as it is denotatively known. The uncovering of the textual meaning of each of these concepts will also serve either to compliment a character or to disparage same, and then the interweave of both concepts will result in reading the text as a tragedy. This study will be anchored on the provisions of Derrida's deconstructive criticism.
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