THE USE OF IGBO PROVERBS IN SELECT PLAYS OF ZULU SOFOLA
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BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
African literature consists of a body of literary works in different languages and genres, ranging from oral literature to literature written in African and colonial languages. As a result of European colonization of the continent from the 16th century to the mid-twentieth century, much of African written literature is in European languages. During the era of colonization, European culture and languages supplanted those of Africa. The most recognized and widely used European languages in African literature are English, French and Portuguese. The literary works that were written in African languages as well as the traditional oral texts went virtually unacknowledged until the late 20th century. This situation increased the recognition of oral traditions in African literature. Akin to this fact, the use of African oral traditions such as proverbs, riddles, anecdotes, songs, tales, mythological narratives and poetry persisted and generally influenced contemporary African literature (drama, prose and poetry). Rems Umeasiegbu, a folklorist, once remarked One cannot talk meaningfully of African literature without mentioning the oral tradition. Until comparatively recent times, most of the literature of black Africa, South of Sahara, was oral, i.e transmitted by word of mouth. Storytelling was popular and was at the time perhaps, the most widespread form of entertainment. (25) Ezenwa-Ohaeto adds that “The exploitation of oral tradition through a synthesized creative crucible enables the modern Nigerian writer to produce fresh, exciting and artistic poetry” (23). Ezenwa-Ohaeto‟s assertion here clearly shows the capability of 2 oral traditions such as proverbs, tales, myths etc. to sustain works of African literature. Certainly African literature consists of the orality of verbal communication and absorbs extensively, several cultural elements to communicate and to give African literature a local content. Interestingly too, this consciousness exhibited by most African writers shows the need in the use of African oral traditions such as proverbs in creative works. Again, Ezenwa-Ohaeto substantiates his argument further: The younger generation of Nigerian poets who started writing after the Biafran War deliberately situated their poems within the cultural tradition of their home regions. Themes and modes of the oral tradition of the Yoruba, Igbo, the Niger Delta or the Plateau people are recorded and transformed into modern intertextual poetic idioms (Back cover of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry and the Poetics of Orality). Stated differently, Nigerian writers writing in English are more selective than those writing in Nigerian languages in the use of oral traditions like proverbs, riddles and anecdotes in their creative works. Often, the Nigerian writers who write in English relate the use of oral oraditions in their works largely to the stylistic aspects of oral literature. Consequently, most of their works, with a few exceptions, make use of proverbs for purposes of localizing their works. Moreover, this relationship between oral tradition and written literature found in contemporary Nigerian literature can be said to be consistent and seminal. Udenta agrees to the claim above when he asserts that Modern African literature and the critical response to it are a consequence of two distinct cultural and aesthetic forces: the received traditionalist aesthetic imagination and the aesthetic over- determined by colonialism. The interplay of these two currents sometimes cripples African Creative Productions and critical practice by either confining the literature to the dictates of an immutable traditionalist aesthetic injunction or by foisting on its bastardized forms of Euro-centric aesthetic thinking.
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