ABSTRACT
This study examines the intertextual relationship between second generation Nigerian poets and the recent Nigerian poets from the perspectives of power relation and canon formation. The study submits that Niyi Osundare, the iconic poet of the second generation stock, exerts a lot of intertextual influence on the poetic practice of contemporary Nigerian poets particularly Remi Raji, Akeem Lasisi, Joe Ushie and Emmanuel Egya Sule who are examined in this study. The study argues that although the contemporary poets are not insular to the poetic influence of other global literatures, the core aesthetics of their poetry exhibits a visible intertextual dialogic with the poetic style of Osundare, their immediate forbear. This trend, as the study argues, instances an intergenerational continuity in the poetry genre. It also chronicles a paradigmatic shift of intertextual relations from the vertical angle where the former colonisers’ artistic practice serves as model to the horizontal where the earlier tradition within the postcolonial space serves as model. The study is a qualitative research and essentially a content analysis of both the primary and secondary data which are sourced substantially from the library. It also deploys the Poststructuralist intertextuality as theoretical framework to probe the extent of the intertextual relations. The study establishes that to fully appreciate the recent Nigerian poetry of English expressions there is the compelling need to study its history of intertextual relation. In addition to the intertextual dimension, the study proves that the symbiotic nexus of power and canon formation equally provides the ontological base for the interrogation of the aesthetic sensibilities of recent Nigerian poetry in English.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
This study examines the poetry of Niyi Osundare within the premise of its canonical status and power relations and its subsequent intertextual significance for some contemporary Nigerian poets. The study is based on the assumption that Osundare occupies a central position in the history of not only Nigerian poetry in English expression but also modern African literature. His prominence manifests in his ability to construct and sustain a distinct poetic identity which in its matter and manner exemplifies the inscription of a decidedly African poetry that privileges, as its artistic subject, the voiceless African masses, fundamentally victims of leadership mismanagement and neglect. By so doing, he succeeds in consolidating a literary canon of decolonisation which is defined most importantly from the aperture of power relations and the deep seated binary opposition between the centre and the periphery as implanted in the nerve centre of language.
The inexorable but intricate relationship between power and canon formation in literary circles is such that not only are the two analogous, but they also signify each other complementarily. Canon is invariably a discursive site of not only literary tradition but of power relations and hegemony. As Foucault argues, power emanates not only in the vertical axis of political/institutional hierarchy but also in all horizontal axis of intellectual, cultural and social discourses. According to Foucault, we think of power beyond the political domination and resistance but as a complex relation that policies and produces. Foucault (1980:29) further argues that “power and knowledge directly imply one another”. Consequent upon this, he further states, “there is no power relation without the correlative – constitution of knowledge.” As Foucault constantly emphasises, there is no “any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.”Intrinsic upon any form of knowledge production, following Foucault‟s argument, is the interplay of power relations.
It then follows that power and canon – the latter a continuum of knowledge production – are two historically interrelated discourses. This is because right from “its origin in specifically textual and scriptural traditions” as Mitchell (2005:20) affirms, “canon is anything but a static or monolithic notion of power and authority.” In contemporary literary practice, canon implies the standardization of literary texts by institutions and individuals as classics that in all their aesthetic and ideological nuances epitomise the dominant culture and or tradition of their context. Linked with the inherent subtleties of ideology and power relations, canon is necessarily a fluid and contestable terrain in literary practice. Adeoti (2001:21) captures the conflictual dimensions intrinsic in canon formation. He says:
Canon, from its origin and practice is distinguished by contradiction. It presupposes the existence of commonly shared codes of creation and consumption of cultural product, which enhances the practice of arts. Yet, it implicates the existence of a set of prescribed rules by which „standard‟ or „correctness‟ in creation is measured.
To such question as to what constitutes a canon for instance or the standard of its measurement, there have been various responses. While Mathew
Arnold‟s famous “the best which has been thought and said” is viewed by many a critic as the benchmark for canon formation, it is still been seen as unspecific a proposition to qualify as a standard signifier of canon formation.
What constitutes the best, in Arnold‟s thesis, is not yet made clear. However,
on the question of what makes a particular work canonical, Bloom (1995:3) says:
The answer more often than not has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange.
Bloom‟s claim, in a sense, re-echoes Aristotelian generic criticism where
Aristotle singles out catharsis as an end effect of a successful tragic play. It
also recalls the Formalist concept of defamiliarisation as an aesthetic element
that defines the literariness of literature. Bloom (1995:3) argues further that: When you read a canonical work for a first time, you encounter a stranger, an uncanny startlement rather than a fulfillment of expectation (emphasis mine).
For Bloom, the uncanny is one of the archetypal aesthetic templates in canon
formation which affirms that canon formation incorporates the inevitable interplay of power and the uncanny. The uncanny in canon formation signifies, according to Bloom, a mark of originality, since, as Bloom (1995) argues, „originality must always hover in an inaugural aspect of any work that incontestably wins the agon with tradition and joins the canon.‟ The uncanny becomes, in this context, a necessary pivotal encoder of power relation in canon formation.
However, by prioritising the aesthetic consideration of the uncanny as the mark of originality and as the totalising signifies of canon-formation, Bloom has ultimately exiled the historical, the political and the cultural as contingencies of literary appreciation and, therefore, of canon-formation. By so doing, he has consigned literature to the mantra of the „universalist‟ apologists of Anglo-American New Critics. This claim however, is hardly palatable with the literary critics of the former colonies whose literary canon consists, first of all, of identity formation, complexities of Nation and Nationhood in matters of aesthetics and thematic concerns. This raises more questions than answers as, Bloom, for reasons more political and cultural than his mania for the universality of the uncanny, rejects the multi-cultural dissension of canon expansion championed by blacks and feminist critics for instance (see Guillory 1993).
The critical insights discussed above on the complementarities of the relationship between power and canon and the aesthetics of the uncanny form the central concerns of this study. The insights provide the centre-planks for the study of the extent and pattern of influence of Osundare‟s poetry on recent Nigerian poetry as it relates to canon formation and the interface of power relations.
Niyi Osundare is unarguably the figure-poet of the Alter-Native poetry tradition in Nigeria who achieved his poetic prominence through avangardist experimentation with both form and content. The Alter-Native poetry tradition in Nigeria‟s literary history refers to the temporal and paradigmatic shift of artistic expression that emerged after the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70). As a temporal poetry tradition, it refers to the post Civil War poetry aesthetics generally referred to as second generation poetry tradition which, as pointed earlier; emerged at the thick of leadership crisis that manifested about three decades after the Civil War; while its paradigmatic undertone manifests in its sustained experimentation with the aesthetics of negation deployed to counter and confront the excesses of the military regime that dominated the leadership space.
Seemingly, because of “his aversion to the pervasive atmosphere of state terror and repression, more than most of his contemporaries,” as Bodunde (2003:285) remarks, Osundare reinterprets “oral aesthetics to create a form of poetry which is revolutionary in terms of content, form and medium of communication.” For the first time in the history of Nigerian poetry of English expression, a manifesto poem prefaced his maiden collection Songs of the Marketplace (1983), charting, as it were, the poetic recipe underlining his artistic concern and that of his generation, and a denunciation, all at once; of the preceding poetry practice.
Since “the process of canon formation” as Onyewuchi (1995) writes, “demands a fending off of the previously strong writings that had preceded it;”the publication of Osundare‟s Songs of the Marketplace, his maiden edition, in1983; supplementing the earlier efforts by Odia Ofeimun, as many critics argue, marked the emergence of a new poetic tradition called the Alter-Native poetry tradition in Nigeria‟s literary history. Thus, with the publication of the Songs of the Marketplace in 1983, Osundare consolidated the fracturing of the hitherto prevailing poetic sensibility in Nigeria‟s literary history.
Osundare‟s poetic oeuvre does not only succeed in popularising a tradition of cultural essentialism but also of poetry of critical discontent. The novel poetic sensibilities which Osundare remodeled and sustained was, in all manners of historical clarity, inspired by Odia Ofeimun in his maiden poetry volume The Poet Lied (1980).The publication of the Songs of the Marketplace (1983) instanced the poet‟s bold experimentation with and consolidation of a new poetic sensibility whose concentric effects is felt not only among his generation, but the next generation. “Since Niyi Osundare” as Echeruo (2012:63) writes, “Nigerian poetry has taken a decidedly new turn”.In the opening manifesto poem “poetry is” in Songs of the Marketplace (1983), Osundare, in a manner quintessentially revolutionary; expresses his discontent with the hermetic poetic practice of the preceding generation of Soyinka et al. and suggests, instead, a lucid oriented poetry in both form and content.
As such, one hallmark of Osundare‟s poetic identity and fame is his success in experimentation with the total stock of language, succeeding in the process, in refreshingly defamiliarising the reader by deepening his appreciation and vision. Equally unprecedented in Nigeria‟s literary history Osundare, with the likes of Femi Osofisan and Odia Ofeimun, pioneered verse journalism, where from 1985-90 he freelanced a poetry column in the Tribune, a renowned newspaper in Nigeria. With this singular act, Osundare succeeded in popularising his name alongside his new poetic style and vision. The series of poems published in the newspaper were later collected and published as a volume entitled Songs of the Season (1990). The newspaper sojourn offers Osundare an interactive platform with his teeming readers in form of letters; availing him in the process of the opportunity of stamping his canon of influence in the manner of poetry writing and appreciation.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The dominant tendencies used in defining the aesthetic features of Nigerian poetry, besides the language factor, are to trace its intertextual root to the western art form; or link its aesthetics nuances to the Africa‟s traditional art form and, in the words of Chinweizu et al., to define some poetry as the miscellany of the middle ground where the artists graft and embellish the western art form with the traditional oral arts. This study seeks to shift the debate on what constitutes Nigerian poetry from the dimensions mentioned above to a more self-conscious intertextual perspectives current in recent Nigeria‟s literary history.
In specific terms, contemporary Nigerian poets are more influenced by the body of African writings than other world literatures. In this vein, the problematic of this study is anchored on the premise that recent Nigerian poetry draws its core intertextual source materials from the immediate preceding generation. As such, this study proposes that while recent Nigerian poetry is not impervious to other influences within and outside the African continent, its core aesthetics exhibits inter-generational intertextuality with artistic practice set down by earlier generations of Nigerian poets. These intertextual echoes in the poetry of third generation Nigerian poets are examined from the discursive matrixes of canon formation and power relations. The study is therefore anchored on the following assumptions that:
- The aesthetics of intertextuality defines the poetic idiom of recent Nigerian poetry in English expression.
- The dialectical tension of power relations inscribes the paradigmatic change of poetic sensibilities between the second generation and the third generation Nigerian poets.
- Recent Nigerian poets model their style after Niyi Osundare‟s inscribing a horizontal dimension of intertextual relations.
- The intertextual dimension of recent Nigerian poetry affirms the Poststructuralists‟ postulation that texts are only defined by their intertextual relations.
1.3 Aim and Objectives
The aim of this study is to establish that the organic interface between power and canon or between canon formation and the aesthetics of intertextuality, defines the literary sensibilities of the recent Nigerian poetry of English expression. This symbiotic nexus invariably provides the ontological base for the interrogation of the aesthetic sensibilities of the poetry corpus in this study. As such, to appreciate the recent Nigerian poetry of English expression, one must have recourse to its literary history of intertextuality. In this light, this study therefore, sets to achieve the following objectives:
- Demonstrate that as an active constituent of reality, recent Nigerian poetry of English expression is organically intertextual in its texture and mien.
- Prove that recent Nigerian poets model their poetic style after Niyi Osundare a second generation iconic poet.
- Illustrate that this intertextual influence is precipitated by the anxiety of canon inclusion and power relations.
- Demonstrate that the intertextual relations can best be illuminated by the theoretical insights of Poststructuralist intertextuality.
1.4 Justification/Significance of the Study
Several researches have been conducted with regards to Niyi Osundare‟s poetry since the publication of his maiden poetry volume in 1983.The perspectives of the researchers range from the study of Osundare‟s Marxist orientation Victor (1986); Onyemachi (1988); Ibiwari (1991); to the poet‟s deployment of ideology in his poetics Maiwada (1993); Ibrahim (2010); his political commitment Abdu (2003); to his stylistic cadences Gabriel (1985).Recent studies, especially the book length critical compendium on the poetry of Niyi Osundare edited by AbdulRasheed NaAllah (2003) equally analysed Osundare‟s poetry from different critical perspectives. The studies range from the examination of Osundare‟s styles in form of poetry as performance; to that of the examination of his infusion of Yoruba folklore and cosmos in the construction of a distinct African poetic identity. The compendium consists of about 38 articles by different scholars across the globe. It focuses much on the study of the style and themes of Osundare‟s poetry.
However, from the study of the available literatures on Osundare‟s poetry, there is much work to be done in the area of intertextual dialogic with the recent Nigerian poets from the angle of canon formation and power relations. This study fills this gap and contributes to the debate about the distinctiveness of the African literary canon and the availability of allusive texts within Africa which African writers draw from and engage in dialogic imagination. This study, in this context, responds to Ogede‟s (2011) claim that intertextual study is largely neglected in Africa. He says:
Among the most prominent characteristic features of African literature largely unremarked until now, is how the writers negotiate strategies for authorship by looking to African texts before creating their own works.
This study intervenes to fill this discursive space by proposing fresh insights to demonstrate that Africa‟s intertextual dialogic is essentially horizontal in its social formation as a result of intergenerational intertextuality between the second generation and third generation Nigerian poets. These insights also manifest in the manner the contemporary Nigerian poets, unlike their counterparts in the prose genre; draw their models not from the first generation but from the second generation Nigerian poets particularly Niyi Osundare. This instance, where a dominant social semiotics exercises influence over the other, as is the case between Osundare and the recent poets, codifies the interface of power relations and by implications of canon formation.
1.5 Scope and Delimitation
This study examines Niyi Osundare‟s poetry styleand thematic concern with a view to tracing their intertextual significance for some recent Nigeria poets. However, the study is limited to the study of four of Osundare‟s poetry volumes namely; Songs of the Marketplace (1983); VillageVoices (1984); The Eye of the Earth (1986), and Waiting Laughters (1990).The limitation is informed by the use of criteria sampling choosing only those texts that manifest the core stylistic and thematic particularities of Niyi Osundare; and which at the same time draw the attention of both literary critics and artists in addition to the recent Nigerian poets examined in this study.
While there are many recent Nigerian poets who draw their allusive data from Osundare‟s poetry, this work is restricted in scope to the study of the selected poetry volumes of only four of these poets namely: Remi Raji, Akeem Lasisi, Joe Ushie and Emmanuel Egya Sule. The selection is done through criteria sampling by choosing only those texts that clearly reflect the core intertextual patterns central to the study.
1.6 Research Methodology
This study is a qualitative research that essentially undertakes content analysis of the relevant texts as methodological framework and poststructuralist intertextuality as critical analytical tool. The research is therefore library based. As such, materials in form of books, Journal articles, official monographs and Newspaper articles are sourced from the library (e-library inclusive) and other electronic and non-electronic sources.
1.7 Chapter Structure
The study is conceived and structured into five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction which consists of the background to the study, problem statement, aim and objectives, justification of the study, research methodology, and theoretical framework etc. Chapter two reviews the related literature and provides missing links that the current study bridges. In chapter three, four of Niyi Osundare‟s poetry collections namely Songs of the Marketplace,Village Voices, The Eye of the Earth and Waiting Laughters are analysed. Chapter four consists of the analysis of the intertextual dimensions between the selected volumes of Raji, Lasisi, Ushie and Sule on the one hand and that of Osundare on the other. Chapter five is the conclusion as such embodies the purview of the argument raised in chapters one to four and in the course of the study.
1.8 Canon Formation in Nigeria’s Literary Tradition
The interface of politics, culture and aesthetics in literary canon formation and its intrinsic complex power relations has been a contending terrain in both literary and cultural criticism for decades. Yet in colonised nations, including those internally colonised, the contention surrounding canon formation is deeply heightened and intense. In such nations, canon formation is analogous with identity formation as it codifies the aspiration and intrinsic desires of the colonies to construct their distinct, national identity in addition to their individual literary temperament.
The African experience, in our case, is an apt example. It signifies the daunting, yet endless, search for the redefinition of literature, including its canon; to suit Africa‟s sociopolitical experience in addition to its distinct world view and culture. The conferences held in the early 1960s in Makerere and Fourah Bay College are prompted in this direction. On the interplay of power relations, cultural identity and literary aesthetics in Africa‟s canon formation, Ojaide (2009:II) offers lucid explanation. He says:
The cultural identity of modern African literature is a major consideration in establishing a canon for its text …these cultural qualities include the utilitarian function of the literature social cohesion, the ethical/moral nature of African civilisation, defence of African culture, African mystical life, ideas of law and order, peculiar attitude to time and space and special use of folklore and language especially of proverbs.
Endless as the list of the African literary repertoire may be, as suggested
above, the list succeeds in establishing the intricate Africa‟s world view, and
complex power relations manifested in its art form. This intricate pool of
Africa‟s literary worldview, as a result of colonial experience, is sine qua non in the establishment of its canon. To corroborate Ojaide‟s claim, Waugh
(2001:71) equally draws attention to the necessity of considering the knotty
symbiosis of politics on the one hand and literary aesthetics on the other in
matter of canon and canon formation. She says:
To understand the formation of literary canon requires a series of the complex interplay of political and aesthetic values and a resistance to the desire to simplify things by collapsing one into the other (Waugh, 2001).
Besides the political and the aesthetics, the morality motif equally serves as
an essential cultural template in Africa‟s canon formation. Again as Ojaide
further observes, African‟s literary canon should also include:
…those works that aim at changing the world as it is (often imperfect) and installing new values that will advance the betterment of society and individuals (Ojaide, 2009).
Thus, intrinsic to Africa‟s literary canon formation, is the privileging of its core values and their manifestations not only in art form but in the society at large. Africa‟s core values in its art form, in addition to its colonial and postcolonial experiences, eschew the doctrine of arts-for-arts sake. It then presupposes that, across space and time, the notion of what is literary canon underscores the very apriori assumption of the question of what is literature. Waugh (2001:73) equally examines this trend in her analysis of the value indebtedness of canon and canon evaluation. The assumption that a text is literature, as Waugh (2001) remarks “is already bound up with apriori assumption of value.” As such, to Waugh, literature is value-laden.
Ojaide (2009:10) further argues in this vein that “…the western definition of what makes literature is far narrower than the African concept of literature.” This is because the definition of literature in Africa, as Ojaide further elaborates “…is inclusive of politics, philosophy, divination, mysticism and so on.” From the foregoing, it can be deduced that it is difficult to truly arrive at what constitutes African literary canon without acknowledging the value indebtedness of its art form. However, this is not to admit that Africa‟s art form privileges matter over and above manner but that the two are symbiotically infused.
Canon formation in Africa is defined not essentially from the prism of textualities but from the vantage discursive spaces of culture, identity and Africa‟s colonial history. “Since literature is a cultural production,” as Ojaide (2009) further reechoes, in his attempt to conceptualise African literary canon, then the “cultural identity of modern African writer is a major consideration in establishing a canon for its text”. Cultural identity, as Ojaide remarks, is a major signifier of Africa‟s literary canon. In this view, “The African literary canon” as Ojaide (2009:8) further explicates, “is based on the Africanness or Africanity and what it constitutes in literary terms.” This submission provides a centre-plank for appropriating the dialectics of Nigeria‟s literary canon formation.
The history of literary canon formation in Nigeria arguably began with the emergence of published literary works in both English and vernacular languages. In the English medium it started in the late 19th Century with the evangelical literatures propagated by the white missionaries; while the indigenous versions sprang up at the beginning of the 20th Century. But, the Northern part of the country was much into writing in Arabic and Ajami as far back as the 15th Century. Thus, by way of historical necessity, we will restrict ourselves to the emergence of written texts in Roman script at the beginning of the 20th Century as our take-off point. The first quarter of the 20th Century witnessed the visibility of a significant number of literary texts written in the three major Nigerian languages, which, going by the semantics of canonicity as texts written with wider institutional prestige and readership, could be said to be canonical.
Fagunwa‟s novel The Forest of a Thousand Demons, Abubakar Imam‟s Ruwan Bagaja and Magana Jari ce 1, 2 & 3 are canonical texts written in the first quarter of the 20th Century. These writers pioneered artistic outlets that essentially depict the culture of identity formation as first. artistic principle since the writers were primarily concerned with the depiction of the cosmology of their respective cultures however remote. However, for the fact that canonicity in its strictest semantic sense implies wider readership, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo languages could not match the spread of the English language within and outside Nigeria. This is because while the three major languages are intrinsically provincial as such are taught in regions; English language is taught in schools across the country and spoken as an official language. Consequently it enjoys wider visibility and acceptability. In this regard, the language factor, in addition to other factors as the roles of the publication industries and academic criticism, constitutes one of the quintessential frontiers of canon formation in colonised countries as Nigeria. Onyewuchi (1995:2) further illustrates this claim where she says: For the Nigerian literary artist, the greatest canonical choice is the language in which to express creativity. Perhaps no other canon-aiding decision is as politically charged as the language question.
The above claim is particularly cogent in Nigeria‟s literary history since the Nigerian literary artist, like his African counterparts, is torn between using the colonialists‟ language and the indigenous language. However, language, with all its cultural and socio-political imperatives, is only a variant of the many essentialities of canon formation. The elitist politics of inclusion and exclusion counts a lot in this regard. To this effect, even though, for instance,
Amos Tutuola‟s The Palmwine Drinkard (1952) is a pioneer text written in the English language, embodying all the ontological status of an African cosmology and literary aesthetics and Tutuola “being the most moralistic of all Nigerian writers,” Achebe(cited in Killam&Rowe,2000:288),it does not enlist into the mainstream Nigerian literary canon as to be included in school curricula or to have earned the reviewers‟ „favourable‟ comments for wider readership and recognition in the same proportion as that of Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart.
But the contention surrounding the canonical status of Tutuola is enormous. Since one of the “…human activities that promote canon formation”, as Onyewuchi remarks, “include the inclusion of texts on the curricula, reviews, literary awards…” “Tutuola‟s poor English,” in the words of Killam&Rowe (2000:209); “necessitated some editorial intervention to render him intelligible to his readers.”But this only explains part of the contention. Dathorne (1971:64) examines Tutuola‟s literary strengths from the way he treats his themes. He says while Achebe treats only the sociological themes, Tutuola treats the theme of threnodic myth of life and this, in Dathorne‟s view, is what gives Tutuola an edge over Achebe. Dathorne writes: Because of this, Tutuola stands at the very forefront of Nigerian literature and, by inference, African writing in English. He was not only among the first black African writers to be published and to win a measure of international recognition, but he was also quite definitely the first writer to see the possibilities of the imaginative translation of mythology into English.
Besides the misgivings surrounding Tutuola‟s competence in the use of the English language, he succeeds in bringing to public consciousness a distinctive magical realist trend; hitherto unexplored in African writings, by exploring the possibility of translating African cosmology into the novel genre. This trend is later sustained and modified by such writers as Ben Okri in his The Famished Road (1991). The debate surrounding Tutuola‟s canonical precedence in the evolution of the novel genre in Nigeria, however, revolves around the language factor, topicality and experimentation. As such, while Tutuola‟s precedence is acknowledged, it is however, with reservation. The novel genre, right from its origin in the Western art form, is a bourgeois‟ commodity; as such retains the elitist flavour intrinsic in it. This explains the deluge of attacks directed at Tutuola‟s linguistic immaturity. The visibility of Tutuola in the global literary scene, in this vein, is therefore as a result of the controversy surrounding the apprenticed use of the English language in his novels.
As a starting point in the context of Nigeria‟s canon formation in prose fictions, Chinua Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart which can be classified as the first canonised text written in the English language to come , not out of Nigeria in particular but Africa as a whole. Nasidi‟s (2002:1) insight in this regards is timely. He says:
…the year 1958 was the precise date of the emergence of what today has been known and institutionalised in our schools and universities as African literature: the year of the publication of Chinua Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart. (emphasis mine)
Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart, however, is not the first novel to come out of Africa. Much earlier, Thomas Mofolo, a South African novelist from Lesotho; enjoyed international recognition with the publication of his third novel Chaka in 1931.Chaka is a novel written in Sesotho but translated into English and other world languages. Equally in Nigeria, Cyprian Ekwensi published People of the City in 1952.However, Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart set the pace of the literature of decolonisation through a conscious approximation of the language of artistic medium to come to terms with African reality. Things Fall Apart is counter hegemonic as it embodies a figural narrative which in its ontology explores Africa‟s idiom of storytelling. In the words of Ojaide (2009:10), Things Fall Apart epitomises an instance where “the language of the coloniser becomes a medium of the colonised to interrogate the colonial enterprise in its political, moral and ethical dimension.” In addition to the domestication of the English language, Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart also draws its canonical strength and distinctiveness, through the use of proverbs. As Ojaide (2009:13) further argues “…proverbs give a distinctive cultural identity to modern African literature.”It sets the pace for the narrative of decolonisation confronting the colonialist myth of African history. As such it attracts enormous critical reviews in literary journals and newspapers in addition to the critical appraisals in the academia. The canonical visibility which Achebe enjoyed and which was the core source of his power relations was as a result of the role played by Heinemann, a publishing house owned by the whites. It is a reputable publishing house based in the United Kingdom but with adistribution network in virtually all corners of the globe. As one of the world‟s largest publishers, Heinemann enjoys the reputation of having seasoned editors in addition to compact marketing strategy. They virtually, at a point, enjoyed proportionate monopoly of publishing and distribution Africa.
Arguably, the publication of Achebe‟s Things Fall Apart eclipsed the visibility of other peer texts in the poetry and drama genres of his time. Achebe‟s canonical status is also complemented by his receipt of the prestigious NOMA and Booker Prize awards and that according to Emenyonu (cited in Onyemelukwe, 2004:38),Things Fall Apart is translated into fifty five languages across the world. However, whether his subsequent novels matched his maiden one in terms of acceptability, as to sustain his canonical tempo, is a question outside the scope of this work.
In the poetry genre, Wole Soyinka‟s Idanre (1967), Christopher Okigbo‟s Heavensgate (1962) and J. P. Clark‟sA Reed in the Tide (1965)are
the progenitor collections in the poetry genre in English expression in Nigeria‟s literary history. However, this is not to assume that there were no poetry collections in English expression prior to the publication of the three poetry collections above. Gabriel Okara was much into poetry writing earlier than the trio of Clark, Soyinka and Okigbo. In the same vein Osadabey‟s Africa Sings (1952) is also a pioneer poetry collection. But the argument is that the prominence of the trio of Soyinka, Clark and Okigbo istraceable to their educational roots at the University College Ibadan, another institutional encoder of canon formation. The Ibadan University College and later with the University of Nsukka, pioneered poetry competition and poetry reading clubs that attracted the attention of international literary scholars as well as global publication outfit.
The trio of Soyinka, Clark and Okigbo started a poetic practice that hybridised the aesthetic tempo of the modernist tradition making waves in Europe of their time on the one hand with that of the African culture on the other. Unlike in the prose fiction, in the poetry genre of the first generation in Nigeria, there is no visible aesthetics of decolonisation defining the poets‟ cultural credo which in its matter and manner is public oriented.
It is necessary however, to restrict ourselves to the study of the iconic figure writers across the genres in each generation, to allow for deeper insight. In the poetry genre, Wole Soyinka forms the iconic figure poet who sustains the dominant poetic tempo of his generation
In his first publication, Idanre and other Poems (1967), Soyinka demonstrated his vast knowledge of Greek mythology and Western modernist tradition. This knowledge is supplemented and blended, with the Yoruba mythology to constitute his distinct poetic style. This, as many critics have argued, is Soyinka‟s conception of literary identity and chronicled the birth of the canon of poetry genre among the first generation Nigerian poets. This blending of myth of origin as a poetic practice, ultimately bred „occultist‟ and „obscurantist‟ poetry style as rightly pointed by the Chinweizu et al. even though it was hotly contested by Soyinka. As such Nigeria‟s poetry in English at its nascent stage, going by the above, is intrinsically esoteric. This poetic trend is an extension of the poetic philosophy of Soyinka‟s European mentors from Eliot who believe that poetry cannot just be so easy to internalise as in plucking a flower to sniff its fragrance; to Ezra Pound, who religiously strove to the idiom of experimentation of the modernist condition of his time in his poetic picture.
Wole Soyinka as Nigeria‟s first generation iconic figure poet succeeded in carving a distinct poetic style for himself by embedding the uniqueness of Africa‟s artistic sensibility in “…myth, history and mores” in addition to Greek mythology and Modernist literary tradition. Thus, Soyinka‟s aesthetic drive is impelled by his desire to situate myth as an inescapable credo in Africa‟s literary practice. Soyinka further argues that “…myth arise from man‟s attempt to externalise and communicate his inner sensibilities” (p3) This surrealist ontology of poetry, as an artistic practice, marks the beginning of canon formation in Nigeria‟s literary history in what is termed specifically as Euromodernism (see Chinweiru et al., 1980; Nkosi, 1981).
This mythic surrealism as a specific literary practice, was however, less cogent in the face of the grim post-independence political reality in Nigeria. As Nigeria witnessed leadership ineptitude in form of corruption, abuse of administrative ethics and, most importantly, the socio-political dislocation suffered as a result of the 1967-70 Civil War the need for elastic poetic sensibility became necessary. Thus, the essence-ideal of the literary practice of the Soyinka‟s et al. became less desirable. This instance, among others, led to the emergence of a new poetic sensibility and a new literary canon especially at the end of the Civil War.
The revolutionary fervor of the emergent poets of the period evidenced in their leftist ideological stance marked an instance of overt power negotiation between the centre, herein referred to as the establishment; and the periphery by which is meant the emergent aesthetics of negation popularised by the leftist poets. The leftist orientation of the emergent poets led to their identification with the teeming masses and their cause in both form and content.
The emerging poets are overtly confrontational with the establishment in matters that border on Nation and Nationhood and the predicament of the masses. The poets in this fold include Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, Harry Garuba, Tanure Ojaide, Onokome Okome, Funso Aiyejina; Modupe Laslie-Ogundupe,Ezenwa Ohaeto etc. „The distinguishing feature of these poets‟, in the words of Sallah (1995),‟is that they have been largely nurtured under the harsh economic and political environment of the 1970s and 1980s. Consequent upon this experience, as Sallah further argues, „…these poets have assumed the task of art for social advocacy in the hope of quickening the possibility for the attainment of a better world‟. They advocate for a change by daring the excesses of the establishment and their collaborators using their artistic medium.
They are labeled as poets of commitment for their continued identification with the plights of the common man through the relentless pursuit for his better condition of living. Due to their radical nativist quest in their poetic experimentation, they are so labeled Alter-Native poets; a name coined by Aiyejina (1988), himself a member poet. The name in this context denotes an alternative tradition which supplanted the earlier one as much as a tradition whose root is in the indigenous cultural world view. In historical terms the period was labeled the second generation of Nigeria‟s poets.
The post Civil War situation, which also marked the beginning of the emergence of a new poetic sensibility, witnessed the unprecedented out pouring of the poetry genre as against works of prose. Chinua Achebe produced his first poetry collection in the period (Beware Soul Brother and other Poems 1971). The dominance of the poetry volumes is, as this study contends, attributable to the necessity for the immediacy of communication with the larger audience. In canonical terms, the poets of the period set the pace for the demystification of poetry and its appreciation in Nigeria‟s literary history.
These poets differ in all poetic manner and matter with the preceding poets. They experimented with the aesthetics of the uncanny by not making poetry mystic but by “a particular – commingling of the familiar and unfamiliar” (Royce, 2003:1).As such, they make poetry embedded in the aesthetic of the uncanny since “the uncanny” as Royce (2003:5) argues “[is] as a means of thinking about so-called a real life, the ordinary, the familiar and everyday” as against the mythic and the occultic.
Niyi Osundare is the iconic poet of the generation (Aiyejina, 1988). He exemplifies the manifestation of the overriding poetic nuances of the group. Osundare establishes his poetic credo and visibility, in the light of Bloom‟s argument, by experimenting with the aesthetics of the uncanny derivable from his Yoruba oral tradition and culture. As such his poetic wit and canonical status as Jones (2003:3) posits and as quoted elsewhere in this study, is linked to his ability at “…yoking seemingly contrary ideas to produce a new insight into a familiar subject.” In this regard, as Jones further argues, Osundare‟s wit and humour are structured in such a way that they deepen sensibilities as they “give his poems a surface lightness that overlay a deeper significance” (2003:4) His, is a poetic rendition of startlement and defamiliarisation which echoes the influence of the English Metaphysical poets especially John Donne and the renowned American poet Walt Whitman.
Thus, as it is with most committed poets, Osundare‟s poetry in the words of Bodunde (2003:273) is the matised around and “…from his aversion at the pervasive atmosphere of state terror and repression around them.” He therefore developed his poetry through the use of incantatory and alliterative sounds in addition to the use of erotic metaphors and word play as pointed by Ojaide (2003), to satirise the misdeed of the establishment. In furtherance to this, he deploys the use of lyricism as a device to douse the ugly sides of most of the themes of oppression in his poetry collections and as a poetic credo embodying his distinct identity. Lyricism as such enhances the musicality of Osundare‟s poetry. Essentially therefore, “compared to his forerunners such as Soyinka and Okigbo” as Wei (2003:300) posits, “Osundare comes closer to the African tradition in his emphasis on the lyricism.”This poetic style fossilised Osundare‟s poetic temperament and that of his peers of the second generation stock.
With Osundare and his co-travellers, a distinct performative, lyrical, accessible and committed poetic oeuvre is constituted as a canon in the second generation Nigerian literary history. In contrast to the first generation, in the second generation stage of Nigeria‟s literary development, poetry received much visibility since more poets were produced than novelists and playwrights.
Although historical mapping in form of neat periodisation is a fluid exercise in literary history, especially in the light of determining the inclusion or exclusion of a writer from a particular generation even while a writer is still alive and writing, the outpouring of enormous corpus of poetry collections in the late 1990s and early 2000 marked the beginning of the third generation of Nigerian poets.
However, while this study concurs Garuba‟s (2005) claim that the detection of a new poetic sensibility different from that of the second generation started in 1988 with the publication of an anthology entitled Voices from the Fringe: An ANA Anthology of New Nigerian Poetry sponsored by the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) and edited by Garuba himself; the anthology is however, in the view of this study, only a forerunner collection foretelling the emergence of a new tradition and not a definite reference point of the emergence of a new tradition. As Garuba (2005:62) claims, only two poems out of a hundred in the anthology „…seem to… thematise the orientation of this new poetry in relation to what had come before‟. Two poems out of a hundred seem insignificant a number to warrant a generalisation of a new tradition. As argued elsewhere in this work, the detection of the new poetic sensibilities is made difficult, the more, as the corpus of the emerging poetry collections sustains the poetic tempo of the preceding generation with little distinct changes. This trend, this study submits, defines the emerging tradition which is organically intertextual as much as intergenerational validating Garuba‟s claim that „…the imaginative space from which literature derives is literature itself‟ (p270).The canon that establishes the aesthetic sensibilities of the contemporary equally called third generation Nigerian poets is codified within the literary space of intergenerational intertextuality. In the context of this study, it is Remi Raji‟s A Harvest of Laughters (1997) with its obvious titular dialogic with Osundare‟s Waiting Laughters (1990) which brings to public consciousness of a generation of poets who is gripped by the anxiety of intertextual negotiations with its immediate forbears.
This is not however to claim that there were no conscious adoptions of the poetic styles of the poets‟ model in the same pattern of intergenerational intertextuality in anthologies and collections as Raji‟s. Raji‟s case, was the most visible attempt in titular correspondence to betray the emergence of such trends. In the same poetic garb as Raji‟s other contemporary poets enjoy artistic visibility such as Akeem Lasisi, Remi Adeoti, Abubakar Othman, Olu Oguibe, Afem Akeh, Ogaga Ifowodo,E.E.Sule, Toyin Adewale, Maik Nwosu, Unoma Azah, Nnimo Bassey and a host of others.
1.9 Poststructuralist Intertextuality as Theoretical Framework
This study draws essentially from the critical insight of intertextuality, a poststructuralist literary production and practice attributed to Julia Kristeva. Poststructuralism as both a temporal and paradigmatic premise(s) is replete, with multiplicity of significations. It is, as Goring et al.(2001) submit, for instance: “…a descriptive title that is sometimes used almost interchangeably with deconstruction.” It also, as Goring et al. further remark, “…describes a movement of which one important element is deconstruction.” Meanwhile, Callinicious (1989) identified two versions of poststructuralism. They are textualism, while the second is one in which the master category is Mitchel Foucault‟s notion of discourse within the binary opposition of Power/knowledge. Whereas the textualist “see us as imprisoned in texts unable to escape the discursive (or unable to see any reality unmediated by discourse); the second form “leaves open the possibility of contact with a reality unmediated by or through discourse” as Rorty in Callinicious (1987) concludes.
Harland (1987) on the other hand suggests that the poststructuralists fall into three main groups: the Tel Que! (A French Journal) group of Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida and the later Roland Barthes, the second group of Gilles Delueze, Felix Guattar and the later Michel Foucault and the third group of Jean Baudrillard standing on his own. Whichever the category mentioned above “French poststructuralism and by extension post structuralist thinking” as Reily (2001) remarks, “articulate a conceptual standing on the scientificity of language.” And that this metaphysics as Reily further affirms, is anchored on the assessment of their two-fold conceptual stand namely:
- Insisting on a notion of language as discourse and
- The continuation of metaphysics of production.
The continuation of the metaphysics of production as cited above is predicated on the Poststructuralist double stand on structuralism since as Bertens (2001) contends “Poststructuralism is unthinkable without structuralism,” as it is a continuation and simultaneous rejection …not only of literary structuralism but even more, so the anthropological structuralism of Levi-Strauss. Thus, following Saussurean revolutionary view of language as system of difference without positive terms, Derrida (cited in Goring et al., 2001) argues that one can discover (by deconstructing Saussurean argument) a relic of the old ideas, an extra-systemic entity, a transcendental signified. Derrida‟s famous thesis that there is nothing outside the text undermines the structuralist notion of the transcendental signified. In effect, therefore, poststructuralism is an “attempt to push the logic of structuralism to its logical conclusion.”In this vein, “its impact on literary theory and criticism” as Goring et al. (2001) averse, “has been its argument that the play of signifier cannot be stopped or made subjects to the sway of any extra-textual continuity.”
The above claim interrogates as much as undermines the orthodoxy of the inescapable role of the author/speaker in meaning making. Meanwhile, in the same vein, Roland Barthes‟ The Death of the Author (1968) and Michel
Foucault‟s Who is an Author? form the two famous theses in the 20th
Century, that foreclosed the radical break from the traditional interpretative
practice at which meaning is located to Authorial Intention.
“Poststructuralism” from the foregoing, as Goring et al. further submit, “is
…implicated in the Death of the Author and in consistently opposing any
textual interpretation laying claim either to finality or undeconstructable authority.
In his The Death of the Author, for instance, Barthes underscores the traditional conception of the Author emerging anterior to the text. He says: …the modern scriptor (unlike the traditional author) is born simultaneously with the text [and] is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing (cited in Lodge, 1995:170).
However, the supposed death of the author which inaugurates the birth of the reader does not presuppose, for Barthes, an exhumation of a transcendentalb signified but rather a celebration of plurality. Barthes says:
A text is not a line of words releasing a single „theological‟ meaning (the message of the Author – God) but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash(cited in Lodge, 1995).
The poststructuralists celebrate pluralism in literary interpretation through their skeptic orientation of the „transcendental signified‟ and the celebration of the differential as against the referential nature of language. Belsey (2002:6) examines this asymmetrical relation. She says:
…language and its symbolic analogue, exercise the most crucial determinations in our social relations, our thought processes and our understanding of who and what we are. Since language determines who we are, how we think, it therefore controls reality and becomes “…no longer a means of communicating experiences or volition but simply a system closed into itself as basking in its own internal coherence” (Reilly, 2001:7).
The term intertextuality is introduced into public consciousness world by Julie Kristeva in her early work of the middle to late 1960s. It is such a fluid term which in its originating stage – at the eve of transition from structuralism to poststructuralism –is fret with different connotations. Since the transition from structuralism to poststructuralism conveyed a frenzied euphoria questioning the rationality and stability of key terms in literary production including meaning; intertextuality as Allen (2002) argues is adopted by both structuralists and poststructuralists across differing semantic levels. He says: …poststructuralist critics employ the term intertextuality to disrupt notions of meaning, whilst, structuralists, critics employ the same term to locate and even fix literary meaning.
Flexible as the term may appear, intertextuality in literary practice is a term overtly identified with the poststructuralists notion of interpretative indeterminacy and authorial plurality that affirms the discursive nature of language and textuality. Again Allen (2002:6) affirms this claim when he says: …the term intertextuality promotes a new vision of meaning and thus of authorship and reading: a vision resistant to ingrained notions of originality, uniqueness, singularity and autonomy. Intertextuality also seeks to redefine the indeterminacy of its discursive formation as such, as a cultural and historical term, it is often associated with notions of pastiche, imitation and the mixing of already established styles and practice (Allen, 2002). The etiological source of intertextuality is traced, in the words of Allen (2002); to “Kristeva‟s blending of Saussure and Bakhtin [to] its poststructuralist articulation in the work of Barthes and its structuralist – articulation in Ganette and Riffaterre. Essentially, the origin of the conceptual praxis of intertextuality is rooted in the seminal works of Ferdinand de Saussure and Mikhail Bakhtin; and Allen further affirms that Kristeva is indeed influenced by “both Bakhtinian and Saussurean models” in which she „combines their insights and major theories.‟
Both Saussure and Bakhtin subscribe to the fact that sign-systems and subsequently meaning are relational. However, while Saussure locates the relationality within the larger langue; Bakhtin on the other hand locates his within the social context of what he technically terms “utterance.” To counter Saussurean idea of relationality, Bakhtin/Volosinov argue that: “If sign-systems are relational it is not because of their place within an abstract
system of language but because of nature of all language viewed in its concrete social situatedness.” This presupposes the fact, as Bakhtin later proposes that all utterances are responses to previous utterances and are addressed to specific addressees. As such the Bakhtinian claim of non-originality of author/speaker resonates significantly in Kristeva‟s concept of intertextuality. It is worth quoting in full. Bakhtin says: …all language responds to previous utterances and to pre-existing patterns of meaning and evaluation …one cannot understand an utterance or even a written work as if it were singular in meaning unconnected to previous and future utterances or works. No utterance or work is independent or MONUMENTAL (emphasis mine). (Cited in Allen, 2002:19).
Here, Bakhtin questions the ontological basis of all utterances (works) as original, singular and pure. He further elaborates that “…the word is not a material thing but rather the eternally mobile, eternally fickle medium of dialogic interaction.” This is because “it never gravitates toward a single consciousness or a single voice (Bakhtin, 1984a:2001) cited in Allen
(2000:27). Bakhtin‟s concepts of dialogism enunciated above radiates
Kristeva‟s critical formulation of intertextuality especially in her seminal work The Bounded Text (1980). In The Bounded Text, Kristeva critiques the notion of singularity and originality of the author in the traditional literature practice. This in essence recalls Barthes‟ denigration of the anteriority of the authorship as capitalist commodification in his The Death of the Author.
Kristeva in her critical formulation sees every text as “a permutation of texts, intentionality in the space of a given text” and that not a single text in this permutation dominates as several of them incorporate “…intersect and neutralise one another” (Allen,2000:35). To further contextualise the textual practice Kristeva in Allen (2002) says: “All texts therefore contain within them the ideological structures and struggles expressed in society through discourses.” As such, the business of the reader/critic, as she suggests, is not to approach it as a reservoir of facts but as a “practice and productivity” a term employed by Kristeva to mean that, “texts do not present clear and stable meanings, they [only] embody society‟s dialogic conflict over the meaning of words (2002:36) The convergence of the horizontal and the vertical or what Bakhtin dubs dialogue and ambivalence respectively; in Kristeva‟s words, is the dividing line between her intertextuality and Bakhtinian dialogic. She says:
- In Bakhtin‟s work, these two axes (vertical and horizontal) which he calls dialogue and ambivalence are not clearly distinguished (1980:66 cited in Allen, 2002).
As such Kristeva replaces their supposed inter-subjectivity with intertextuality. Kristeva proceeds to state that in the horizontal axis “the word in text belongs to both writing subject and addressee.” While in the vertical dimension “the word in the text is oriented toward an anterior or synchronic literary corpus.” In essence therefore, as Allen (2002) further elaborates, “the communication between author and reader is always partnered by a communication or intertextual relation between poetic words and their prior existence with past poetic texts.” In this context, Osundare‟s poetry is the anterior literary corpus from which the recent Nigerian poets draw their allusive materials. This is of importance to our study as it intends to first of all demonstrate that poetic development in Nigeria‟s literary history, if anything, is at present organically intertextual.
Basically therefore some of the major tenets of intertextuality as both literary practice and productions have to do with the view that:
- Intertextuality concerns a text emergence from the „social text‟ but also its continual existence within society and history.
- A text‟s structures and meanings are not specific to itself.
- A text‟s meaning is understood as its temporary rearrangements of elements with socially pre-existent meanings.
- The dynamic literary word is to be conceived in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. The insights of the tenets of intertextuality are deployed in this study to probe the extent to which Osundare‟s stylistic nuances are appropriated by the third generation Nigerian poets. The core tenet of intertextuality is that text‟s structure and meaning is not specific to itself. By implication this means that every text is an inter-text. This critical insight is patent in this study as it aids to interrogate the assimilation of the stylistic tone and tenor of Osundare‟s voice by the contemporary Nigerian poets in form of rhythmic flow, performative cadences; lexical borrowing and the adoption of satiric mode, tone and tenor among other things. Following Bakhtin, all utterances are as a result of other utterances or they are as a result of response to previous utterances. Kristeva draws her analogy from the foregoing to claim that the source of all literary texts is not in the society but in the previous texts. The intertextual relationship between Osundare and the budding contemporary poets examined in this study provides a discursive site where the antecedent texts not only define the textual relationship but inscribe a horizontal dimension of social formation and of power relations.
