The African Symposium: An online journal of the African Educational Research Network

THE BLACK MANS ORDEALS: A POST-COLONIAL READING OF KOFI ANYIDOHOS ANCESTRALLOGIC & CARIBBEANBLUES Gabriel Sunday Bamgbose Tai Solarin University of Education Abstract Black writing has always been engaged with the historical circumstances that condition the consciousness of the black race. Attempts have always been made to explore the dimensions of these historical circumstances in post-colonial studies often with focus on prose fictional and dramatic genres, but not much effort has been made to explicate this representation of history of loss and trauma within the purview of post-colonial orientation in modern African poetry. This paper, therefore, is a critical post-colonial treatment of the engagement of Kofi Anyidohos poetic imagination with issues of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism in the black mans history. This is in an attempt to examine how Anyidoho has given voice to the silent but not silenced history of slavery and by extension, history of colonialism and disillusionment of neo-colonial world order. The paper adopts the counter-discursive and the autocritical paradigms of post-colonial theory, which accounts, through the fusion of cultural and literary criticism, for processes through which the postcolony responds to the issue of colonialism and its aftermath, and the present realities of the neo-colonialism and its diverse implications. For the purpose of this study, Anyidohos AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues is subjected to literary and critical analysis to examine the poets chronicle of the black peoples traumatic experiences of the Middle Passage, colonial encounter, and neo-colonial hopelessness. The text journeys through the nervous conditions of the post-colony. The poet versifies the painful and dehumanizing history of slavery, which causes Africans to loss their lives and identity. The grim experiences of the black slaves on the Caribbean sugarcane fields run through the blues. Colonialism also does its best to exploit the people of black descent materially and immaterially. Even when the colonial masters leave the leadership of Africa to Africans after colonialism, the black leaders further the colonial exploitation and imperialism in new ways and betray their fellow blacks. Irrespective of the complexity of the black mans ordeal, the poet expresses hope and revolutionary vision. The poems are artistic logic that reconciles the black peoples past with their present in order to project the future of the black race. Modern African poetry maintains an intricate tie between text and context because there is a strong link between African letters and African life. Like other African writers, Anyidoho in his poetry displays social, political and historical commitment to his black race. Key words: Black race, Post-colonial, Slavery, Colonialism, Neo-colonialism Introduction The history of the black mans race is smeared with many ordeals. The race has been a victim of slavery, colonialism with its imperialistic and exploitative tendencies, racial segregation and color bars, and the final blow that leaves this race in coma is the advent of neo-colonialism, which Ngugi wa Thiongo simplistically describes as an advanced stage of imperialism (1982:5). All these come to bear on the black man just because he is black and his being black accords him the status of a sub-human exposable to dehumanization. These ordeals mark the unique experiences and realities of the black mans world and in fact his identity. It is within the consciousness of these ordeals that Kofi Anyidoho weaves his poetry. Romanus Egudu (1978:2) has contended that The artist is a member of society, and the content and style of his [or her] work are affected by social reality. The poetry of Anyidoho, like other African writers, shows deep concern for the social realities that characterize the postcolony. This suggests that the treatment of the text cannot be removed from the context that produces it. This makes poetry in Africa highly utilitarian (Tanure Ojaide, 1995:4). The purpose of this study is to investigate the post-colonial condition of Africa within the broad context of the history of the black race as treated by Anyidoho in his collection of poetry, AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues (1993). The text is considered relevant for this study because it artistically spins the web of the black mans history and experience from the past to the present. The collection, in Anyidohos words, is the forever journey into SoulTimeIt is the quest for a future alive with the energy of recovered vision, a future released from the trauma of a cyclonic past and from the myopia of a stampeded present (xii).

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It is observed that this collection has not attracted much critical attention as others authored by Anyidoho despite the fact that the poets quest for recovered vision (xii) boldly confronts the cause of the black worlds (especially Africa) predicament by tracing its history of pain and of endless fragmentation (xi). Oyeniyi Okunoye in Pan-Africanism and Globalized Black Identity in the Poetry of Kofi Anyidoho and Kwadwo Opokwu-Agyemang (2009) examines how Anyidohos artistic vision advocates the linking up of various segments of the black world as a necessary act of collective definition of Africans peoples in their various locations [which] cannot be divorced from their histories (77). To him, the poet attempts to reconstruct the identity of the black race, which is an effort targeted at imaginatively linking up the various black diasporic communities with the homeland (65). Reading the collection from the perspective of Pan-Africanist consciousness, Okunoye claims that it presents the poets dream of an integrated global African community (73). However, this paper critically explores issues of slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism in the text in order to revisit and rethink the violent and traumatic realities that mark the black identity. This study analyses the black mans ordeals as represented in the text within the framework of postcolonial theory. Post-colonial literary theory deals the writings of the margin, paying attention to how literary and cultural elements are manipulated in order to subvert the hegemonic structures of colonialism and neo-colonialism. This accounts for the suitability of the theory since it addresses the post-colonial condition of the black/African world, which forms the preoccupation of the poet. Okunoye (2008) makes a strong case for the exploration of the possibilities of post-colonial theorizing in the reading of modern African poetry. As opposed to other genres of African literature prose fiction and drama much of African poetry remains un-theorised in basic postcolonial terms (Okunoye, 76). This makes this study significant as it contributes to the body of discourse exploring the possibilities of the adoption of post-colonial theory to the study of modern African poetry. Okunoye maps out the pattern of post-colonial criticism of modern African poetry by identifying four major orientations of its post-colonial essence: It considers as postcolonial works that dramatise the corrupting influence of the colonial engagement on the African; works that project a conscious resistance to the colonial presence by subverting imperialist distortions in the perception of Africa and Africans and works that excavate pre-contact indigenous literary practices in order to assert cultural identity, accounting in the process, for the prevalence of specific forms of postcolonial consciousness within particular poetic traditions in Africa (77). The notion that the counter-discursive or the writing back paradigm is probably the most applicable to the creative vision underlying the production (77) of much of African poetry holds sway in Okunoyes study, even though he acknowledges this as the first stage in the appraisal of postcolonial orientation in modern African poetry. However, this study engages the counter-discursive and autocritical paradigms of post-colonialism in the explication of the artistic vision of Anyidoho in his collection, AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues. This study adopts the tool of literary and critical analysis in order to examine the counterdiscursive strategies (Helen Tiffin, 1995:96) deployed in the text, which is crucial to the practice of post-colonial discourse. It considers how the poet engages his poetic imagination in questioning the hegemony of the West. Here, attention is paid to the silent, but not silenced poetics of slavery and colonialism that the poet versifies in his quest to speak to the history which brings dis/order to national and communal milieu (Georgia Axiotou, 2008: ix) of the Negro. Moreover, this study does what Kehinde (6) calls a post-colonial autocritique of the neo-colonial stage of imperialism (Ngugi, 1982:5) in the black/African world order as treated in the text. At this point, the discussion of the poetry shifts its focus to the neo/post-colonial ordeals. Post-Colonial Theory Post-colonial theory is a body of discourse that responds to colonialism and its aftermath in the Empire. It is a form of race and ethnicity-bound discourse, which counters the centre in order to give the margin its own true voice and identity in the imperial order of things. In the words of Okunoye (2008:79), The fusion of cultural and literary criticism is most evident in postcolonial discourse. It is a body of thinking that interrogates Western hegemony through the examination of literary and cultural productions. Identity, which is defined by race and ethnicity, is central to postcolonial discourse. Donald Hall loosely defines the term race as a form of cultural identity based on physiological attributes. It indicate[s] practically any group of people who self-identify separately 35 Volume 13, No. 1, June 2013 The African Symposium (ISSN# 2326-8077)

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from others (2001:264). Race, Hall submits, refers to the ways that physiological characteristics (such as skin tone) are combined with distinctions in social history (such as region of original habitation) to distinguish and identify groups of people (2001:265-266). The term ethnicity, on the other hand, refers to the form of cultural identity often based on non-physiological attributes such as nation of origin, religious affiliation and/or shared customs or language (Hall, 2001:266). The definition of race and ethnicity as forms of cultural identity suggests the major engagement of post-colonial theory as a medium of challenging oppression based on cultural identity by focusing directly on national and regional legacies of imperialism and colonialism in order to enrich our understanding of the diverse experiences and rich heritages of all groups and peoples (Hall, 2001:266). Post-colonial theory is an amorphous and heterogeneous field of enquiry, which focuses on colonial and neo-colonial oppression, on resistance to colonialism, on the respective identities of colonizer and colonized, on the patterns of interaction between those identities, on postcolonial migration to the metropolis, on the ensuing hybridity of culture and so on (Hans Bertens, 2001:202). Post-colonial theory develops out of colonial and neo-colonial experiences in the worlds that have witnessed oppression in its old state and are still going through its hurdles in its new form. Hence, Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson and Peter Brooker (2005:219) simply describe postcolonialism as a form of discourse that seek[s] to undermine the imperialist subject. Post-colonial theory, in its foremost dimension, is a response to Western hegemony and an attempt to subvert the notion of Western superiority over the so-called third world inferiority. Mary Klages (2006:147) states that the field of post-colonialism: examines the effect that colonialism has had on the development of literature and literary studies - on the novels, poems, and English departments within the context of the history and politics of regions under the influence, but outside the geographical boundaries of England and Britain. The development of post-colonial studies started with the development of colonialism. The analysis of the cultural dimension of colonialism/imperialism, Selden and Widdowson (1993:188) claim, is as old as the struggle against it. In Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffins (1995:1) perspective: Post-colonial literatures are as a result of this interaction between imperial culture and the complex of indigenous cultural practices. As a consequence, post-colonial theory has existed for a long time before the particular name was used to describe it. Once colonized people had cause to reflect on and express the tension which ensued them from these problematic and contest, but eventually vibrant and powerful mixture of imperial language and local experience, post-colonial theory came into being. Post-colonial discourse has always been a reaction to imperialism even before its conscious formulation as a theoretical field of study. It is an ontological and epistemological body of principles set to question the notion of Western domination and the being of the centre (the dominating) and the margin (the dominated). Hence, post-colonial theory is a counter-hegemonic discourse in which the empire writes back to the centre, in the words of Rusdie Salman, (qtd in Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 1989:ix), to dismantle the Western notion of superiority and assert their identity. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (1989), submit that post-colonial theory deals with issues as: migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place, and responses to the influential master discourses of imperial Europe such as history, philosophy and linguistics, and the fundamental experiences of speaking and writing b which all these come into being. None of these is essentially post-colonial, but together they form the complex fabric of the field (2). This suggests that the basic thrust of post-colonial theory is the literary and cultural decolonization of the Empire, which is a process that involves a radical dismantling of the European codes and a post-colonial subversion and appropriation of the dominant European discourses (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 1989:195). The theoretical arguments in post-colonial theory, Selden, 36 Volume 13, No. 1, June 2013 The African Symposium (ISSN# 2326-8077)

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Widdowson and Brooker note, are influenced by theories of ideology, Derridas deconstruction method, Bakhtins dialogics, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Lyotards postmodern critique and Foucaults theories of power and knowledge. Post-colonial theory questions Western dominance of knowledge and power. It seeks to reread and rewrite the European historical and fictional record for the purpose of decolonizing the Empire. According to Tiffin (1995:95-96), this decolonization is a process that: invokes an ongoing dialectic between hegemonic centrist system and peripheral subversion of them; between European or British discourses and their post colonial dismantling. Post colonial literature/cultures are thus constituted in counterdiscursive rather than homologous practices, and the other fieldsof counter-discursive strategies of the dominant discourse. Post-colonial theory queries the assumption of universalism through which the West maintains its hegemony, and it maintains the alterity or otherness of the margin through hybridity, which Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (1989:78) consider as the source of literary and cultural redefinition. These are the underlying principles of post-colonial discourse. In the present dispensation in post-colonial discourse, there is a shift from the history of colonialism to the analysis of the postcolonial world order (Kehinde, 6). Citing Ania Loomba (1998:256), Kehinde notes that post-colonialism, in its autocritical sense, has shifted towards expansion of neo-colonial imbalances in the contemporary world order (6). In the words of Oyegoke (2006:289), neo-colonialism is a form of new hegemony. Ngugi wa Thiongo (1986:4) maintains that imperialism has continued to control the economy, politics, and cultures of the margin even after colonialism. After the decentring of the old centre, a new centre originates within the old margin and furthers the exploitation and imperialism of the old centre. It should be noted that this new centre is in communion with the old centre, and this makes the oppressive burden heavier on the new margin. Post-colonial critics deconstruct and subvert this new order of imperialism in their writing. From the foregoing, it is obvious that post-colonial discourse is a product of connected history of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism that shapes the being and existence of the subaltern. According to Ayo Kehinde, the term post-colonial: has at least two meanings inherent in it as reflected in the essays (in Postcolonial Lamp). In the first instance, it connotes the time or literature after colonialism. Secondly, it connotes the tug-of-war between the memories of the colonial past and the utopian dream of the postcolonial future that is held in the uneasy present of postcolonialism (2008:6). Post-colonial discourse explores issues of decolonization or the political and cultural independence of a people formerly subjected to colonial rule, on the one hand, and the socio-political realities/experiences of these people under the leadership of their own people after the colonial era, on the other hand. Post-colonialism possesses a bi-partite nature. First, it is an intellectual movement that attempts to correct the stereotypical assumptions foisted on the colonized by their colonial masters during the era of colonization; second, it is a reflection of the realities that independence brought about in the Empire. A Post-Colonial Critique of Kofi Anyidohos Ancestrallogic & Caribbeanblues Kofi Anyidoho is a Ghanaian poet. He has taught at Western University and Cornell University; he now teaches at the University of Ghana, Legon. His poetic imagination is influenced by the oral Ewe poetry. In AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues (1993), Anyidoho embarks on an odyssey through the history of the black race from the past to the present. The collection presents the logic of black mans ordeals through the web of history. The poet chronicles the wandering of the blacks through history and memory, seeking lost landmarks, often proceeding with an intuitive logic marked by a geography of scars and by the inescapable living wound under a patchwork of scars (Anyidoho, xiii. Emphasis is added). Since the poems give expression to the traumatic experiences that characterize the life the black people, the blues: spoke of some sadness, pain, or deprivationThe melancholy tone of the lyrics, however, is not only world-weary but also world-wise. The blues expound the hard-won wisdom of bitter life experience. They frequently create their special 37 Volume 13, No. 1, June 2013 The African Symposium (ISSN# 2326-8077)

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mood through down-to-earth, even gritty, imagery drawn from everyday life (X. J. Kennedy & Dana Gioia, 2007:549). The Taino in 1992 (3-5), recalls the turbulent memory of the Taino, a Caribbean Lost Land (3). The ugly history of slavery and the inhumane activities of Christopher Colomb, who they say discovered the land, are captured here: So they wiped them out Drowned their screams Burned their nerves and bones And scattered their ashes Across the intimidating splendor Of this young history of lies (3). This point in time in history is described as the StormTime, when Hurricanes, the symbol of violence brought by Colomb sweeps the natives of Taino through the infinity of centuries / forever lost to trauma and to amnesia (5). The violence of slavery wipes off the natives of the land. Christopher Colomb is violence-personified; hence the repetition of his name and its contrast with the images of Hurricane, Sea of Blood and Oceans of Blood. In San Pedro de Macoris (6-7), the gory picture of the experience of the Haitian immigrants in the Canefields/ the sugarfields is captured in grim images, which match the dehumanizing experience of slavery. The poet presents the sad history of the Haitians as they shuttle through life in infinite sadness on plantations In the uncertain Dance of Zombi, where they poured out their lives Upon the sugarfields. The poet, in a tone that carries the gravity of intense sorrow, says that the Haitian Batey / Is a Living Wound / In the throat of the Sugarmill. The dehumanizing experience, the poet notes in Republica Dominicana (8-11): undresses your skin peels your veins and dilutes your blood. dispossessed of your ancestory your BlackNess Dissolve into vague regions of the indios myth (8). The Negroes lost their ancestral heritage, their identity and are displaced. That is why they are mislabeled Indios (Anyidoho, xiii). The history of the black race is: Full of discrepances and disjointed limbs. pitiless and venomous image of historys distortures of our furious race (11). The message and the form of the lines match aptly to reflect the black races dismemberment. The images of Death & Life (cast in a parallelistic mode) in the still center of RagingStorms, nightmares, mask of agony and a Tarantula crawling in the dark into the personas daydream build up to create an eerie effect on the reader. All these are devices meant to show the magnitude of the history of slavery and the Middle Passage with its attendant Atlantics turbulent waves and its adverse effect on the black mans psyche. Earthchild shifts its perspective mainly to the memory of colonialism and how it erodes the traditions of the black man (Africans specifically): Termites came and ate away our voice / ate away our rainbows gown of flames / soiled memories with wild banquets of blood (19). The poet captures the soul of the Negroes song in order to depict the essence of African and Caribbean spirit. The repetition of the cross rhythms of Jazz, the polyrhythmic miles of Jazz" the rumbling weight of drums, and the wails of saxophones foreground the essence of song and voice in the ancestral 38 Volume 13, No. 1, June 2013 The African Symposium (ISSN# 2326-8077)

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heritage of the black. This heritage, as a result of colonization is lost but it is found again. The poems tone is that of mixed feelings of fear and hope. There is the fear that the ancestral heritage may be lost again to pampered dreams of mythmakers [and] to imperial dreams of historys pawnbrokers (21). Yet, the alternated refrains are imbued with hope: And still we stand among the cannonades We smell of mist and powdered memories And those who took away our voice Are now surprised They couldnt take away our song (23). The poem is a mockery of colonialism and its attendant ordeals. The other parts of the collection shift in perspective from the general experience of the black races history to the African colonial and neo-colonial experiences. Children of the Land (32-41) captures the African landscapes - the Northern, Southern, West, Central and East African landscapes and their peculiar features. Redeemers (82-83) relates the activities of the colonizers aided by the white missionaries, who condemn African cultures and religion and persuade us all / against our very selves. This is done to uphold the Western hegemony and relegate the other to the marginal position: They came with a Bouquet of CobWebs Sang obscene songs Over our sacred images of Self and Gods Their huge nostrils still clogged With dust and steamy breath. In their hands a kind offer of Holy Death (83). They offer their religion and culture to kill Africans, but our human flesh suck to our bones / and noble passions still move us on / even among our many blunders (83). There is the hope that Africans have not lost of all their self to colonialism. In Santriofi, the poet pays attention to the neo-colonial violence: But once too often weve held our doubts and found unspeakable terror in silence and patience when marvelous blockheads took up megaphones and broke eardrums with philosophical obscurities and baboons in mufti and native sandals made menacing speeches from platform (71). The natives, who take over leadership after the colonial era, betray their fellow countrymen and turn politics to a game of exploitation and power abuse. They are fortified with propaganda. They are halfwits & gifted inventors / of designers deaths in man-made seasons of drought (74). Soon disappointment and disillusionment set in. This menace of neo-colonial imperialism informs the revolutionary vision of the poet. In Bayonets, the poet contends that Rivulets of venom shall water our fields / Restoring this soil to ancestral Fertile Time (77). Kofi Anyidohos poems, as it has been noted by Jawa Apronti (1979:41), are those of the speaking voicehe reveals a tendency to the elegiacthe theme of death and destruction is pervasive; the mood is predominantly gloomy, the tone somber. The stylistics of the poems is characterized by constant and unusual use of capitalization and unusual fusion of lexical items. His experimental use of language, which is manifested in his mixture codes and his engagement of historical allusions, gives his poetry its uniqueness.

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Conclusion This critical analysis is done in order to weigh how committed and utilitarian the poets work is. It is a logical and analytical endeavour that attempts to justify the poets artistic vision of recovery in his journeyinto our past in order to come to terms with our future (xi). From the analysis, it is crystal clear that slavery and colonialism have not lost their grip from the black mans neck; they simply continue their stifling and strangling duties since the slave and colonial masters have not given up their preoccupations. They have only, borrowing the words of D. H. Lawrence, changed guards, with the white imperialists being replaced by the black imperialists. This makes the black mans ordeals a very complicated one. Perhaps, the complexity of Anyidoho subject in this collection informs the complexity of his style. His use of unusual compounding and capitalization of words is an intellectual attempt to subvert the linguistic code of the centre for the purpose of maintaining a radical difference. His use of the metaphor of Santrofi Amona, the dilemma bird of Akan mythology (61), as a cultural code that represents the important role of the artist in the society, also attests to the fact that the poet strives to redeem the image of Africans and reassure their identity. The poet gracefully maintains a striking balance between the complexity of his subject and style. The weaving of Anyidohos poetry shows that there is no clear cut distinction between text and context in black writing. The poems connect African letters with black socio-economic, political and historical consciousness. Thus, it is a form of poetry bent, borrowing the words of Chinua Achebe (1975:62), to bear the burden of African experiences and realities from the past to the present. References Achebe, C. (1975). Morning yet on creation day: Essays. London: Heinemann. Anyidoho, K. (1993). AncestralLogic & CaribbeanBlues. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Apronti, J. (1979). Ghanaian poetry in the 1970s. In K. Ogungbesan (Ed.), New West African literature. Ibadan, Heinemann, 31-44. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H. (1989). The empire writes back: Theory and practice in postcolonial literatures. London: Routledge. Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H. (Eds.), (1995). The post-colonial studies: A readers guide. London: Routledge. Axiotou, G. (2008). Breaking the Silence: West African Authors and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Thesis. English. The University of Edinburgh. Xi+225. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3270 Bartens, H. (2001). Literary theory: The basics. London: Routledge. Egudu, R. (1978). Modern African poetry and the African predicament. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Hall, D. (2001). Literary and cultural theory: From basic principles to advanced applications. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Kehinde, A. (2005). An Aesthetics of Realism: The Image of Postcolonial Africa in Meja Mwangis Going Down River Road. Entertext: An Interdisciplinary Humanities e Journal 5, 223-253. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://arts.brunnell.ac.uk/gate/entertext/home.htm Kehinde, A. (2008). A Review of The Postcolonial Lamp: Essays in Honour of Dan Izevbaye (Edited by Aderemi Raji-Oyelade & Oyeniyi Okunoye). Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/matat/2011/00000039/00000001/art000 35 Kennedy, X. & Gioia, D. (2007). Literature: Introduction to fiction, poetry, drama and writing. 5th compact ed. New York: Longman. Klages, M. (2006). Literary theory: A guide for the perplexed. London: Continuum. Ojaide, T. (1995). New trends in modern African poetry. Research in African Literatures, 26(1), 4-19. Okunoye, O. (2008). Modern African poetry as counter-discursive practice. In A. Raji-Oyelade & O. Okunoye (Eds.). The postcolonial lamp: Essays in honor of Dan Izevbaye. Ibadan: Bookcraft, 73-93. Okunoye, O. (2009). Pan-Africanism and globalized black identity in the poetry of Kofi Anyidoho and Kwadwo Opokwu-Agyemang. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 40(1), 5779. Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://ariel.synergiesprairies.ca/ariel/index.php/ariel/article/download/2630 Oyegoke, L. (2006). Reading: The empire writes back. In S. Ayodele, G. Osoba & O. Mabakoje (Eds). Aspects of language and literature. Ijebu Ode: TASUED, Dept of English, 286-294. Selden, R. & Widdowson, P. (1993). A readers guide to contemporary literary theory. New York: Harrester Wheatsheaf. 40 Volume 13, No. 1, June 2013 The African Symposium (ISSN# 2326-8077)

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Selden, R., Widdowson, P. & Brooker, P. (2005). A readers guide to contemporary literary theory. 5th ed. London: Longman. Tiffin, H. (1995). Post-colonial literatures and counter-discourse. In B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths & H. Tiffin (Eds), The post-colonial studies: A readers guide. London: Routledge, 95-98. Thiongo, N. (1982). Devil on the cross. London: Heinmann. Thiongo, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Nairobi: Heinemann. Author Information Bamgbose, Gabriel Sunday Department of English, College of Humanities Tai Solarin University of Education P.M.B 2118, Ijagun, Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, Nigeria Tel: +2348038615161 Email: gabrielbamgbose@yahoo.com

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