FOLKLORE AS TITLE MATRIX OF GREAT LITERATURES: A STUDY OF THE AFRICAN NOVEL

Ezugu, Michael Amadihe (2019) FOLKLORE AS TITLE MATRIX OF GREAT LITERATURES: A STUDY OF THE AFRICAN NOVEL. Thinkers Journal: A Publication of Faculty of Arts, GO. Uni., 1 (2). pp. 85-104.

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Abstract

Folklore, oral literature or the oral narrative tradition is not merely a genre of the arts; it is a way of life. Such writers like Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Achebe, Amadi, Nwapa, Armah, to African modernists, and feminist writers like Kole Omotoso and Zaynab Alkali, Buchi Emecheta and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie take their inspirations from folklore - - that inexhaustible spring of culture and tradition. Folklore as a protean element in life and literature pervades all aspects of human endeavor especially in traditional societies where it fulfils an- indispensable function by expressing, enhancing and codifying belief and safeguarding morality. From the . days of Homer to the present, folklore has always fascinated the common man, the artist, the writer, and the thinker. This paper posits that if European writers . find folklore inevitable in their works, African writers should .find it even more fundamental, for folklore provides a structural organizing principle of literary form. It is the matrix of great literatures; it often provides a central controlling image even when it may not be visible on the surface in some sophisticated or seemingly my tho clastic works of literature like Kole Omotosa's Memories of Our Recent Boom and Chimamanda N. Adichie's Purple Hibiscus.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Divisions:	Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Education
Depositing User:	mrs chioma hannah
Date Deposited:	27 Sep 2021 15:10
Last Modified:	27 Sep 2021 15:10
URI:	http://eprints.gouni.edu.ng/id/eprint/3156

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