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Browsing Department of English-Journal Articles by Author "Adeoti, Gbemisola"
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- ItemOpen AccessIntroduction: African Politics and Letters after Soyinka's Nobel Prize(2006) Adeoti, Gbemisola; Evwierhoma, MabelAs it has been well acknowledged across the globe, Wole Soyinka is a leading figure when it comes to assessing Africa's contribution to world literature in contemporary times. He is, no doubt, a committed writer whose literary oeuvre blends in laudable measure, political engagement with artistic virtuosity. Here is a writer who is also a political activist, social crusader, cultural philosopher, literary theorist, mythopoet, dramatist, director, actor, film producer, essayist, critic and translator among other designations. Soyinka's works well exemplify the interventionist role of the African writer in politics, not only because the literature itself is born in the labour room of politics, but also because of the historical role of midwife constantly placed on the shoulders of statesmen, philosophers and intellectuals (among whom writers are) in the birth of a liberated and truly developing continent. Hence, his arts and politics leap beyond the text into the bewildering realm of everyday reality confronting absurdities on the streets as well as in the State House. Soyinka's adroit exploration of the indigenous African and Western artistic resources, written and oral, in this regard, has been well accounted for in literature. This much was not lost on the judges of the Nobel Prize when he was awarded that of Literature in 1986.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Military in Nigeria's Postcolonial Literature: An Overview(2003) Adeoti, GbemisolaThe paper is a survey of Nigeria's postcolonial literature with a view to highlighting how writers through diverse ideological persuasions and aesthetic modes have captured people's experience under military rule (from January 15, 1966 to May 29, 1999). The paper observes that the military is not only a dominant political force in the country's postcolonial governance but also a recurrent subject in its narrative fiction, poetry and drama. In the works of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, John Pepper Clark, Ola Rcttimi, Femi Osofisan, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Odia Ofeimun, Niyi Osundare, Ben Okri etc, one is confronted with ropes of power abuse, economic mismanagement and poverty among other legacies of military regimes. Their art also capture the twist in public perception of soldiers. Whereas, the soldiers were celebrated initially as messiahs who rescued the polity from corrupt politicians, they became vampires in the 1980s and 1990s after plunging the nation into political turmoil and economic tribulation. In its conclusion, the paper contends that Nigerian literature in post-military dispensation will continue to be topical and relevant. Indeed, it has a crucial role to play in the task of nation-building and democratic development necessitated by years of military (mis) rule.
- ItemOpen AccessNarrating the Green gods: the (auto) Biographies of Nigerian Military Rulers(2006) Adeoti, GbemisolaSince the inauguration of military rule through the first coup of Saturday, 15 January 1966, there has been no aspect of Nigerian life that has not experienced, whether positively or negatively, the reformative ardour of successive military regimes. As a result of the long span of military rule and the domination of political power by soldiers while military governance lasted, soldiers have had an immense impact on politics, education, sports, internal and international relations, economy, law, penology, resource allocation and so on. This observation has been made in diverse studies.
- ItemOpen AccessPeople of the City: Politics and the Urban Experience in Contemporary Nigerian Literature(2007) Adeoti, GbemisolaContemporary Nigerian literature, a by-product of urbanisation, has contributed considerably toward the construction, dissemination and popularisation of metropolitan ethos. Whether in the narrative mode of the novel, the performative mechanism of drama/theatre or in the euphony of poetry, literature is a socio-cultural space where the subalterns of contemporary metropolitan centres find their voices and negotiate their marginality. Interestingly, both the powerful and the powerless are claimants to and keen contestant for the urban space. That is much evident in the framework of conflict, characterisation, subject and narrative techniques of contemporary Nigerian literary art, as evident in this works of Cyprian Ekwensi, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Femi Osofisan, Bauchi Emecheta, Zulu Sofola, Ahmed Yerima and others. The paper is essentially motivated by teh need to navigate the contours of urban experience in post-independence Nigeria as well as the dimension/texture of its politics through the corpus of imaginative literature generated by this experience. It focuses on the complex manifestations of the urban phenomenon beyond the social, economic and political disciplinary framework. Quite clearly, literature inscribes the experiences of dislocation and that is a recurrent feature of the post colonial state. It is our contention that ordinarily, the city is supposed to be the driving engine and the centre piece of modernisation and development. It is a human space with its own ethos of collectivity and well being. However, in the case of contemporary Nigeria, the city has failed in this responsibility, just as the dreams of modernisation and development remain deferred from one political dispensation to the other. to understand the extent of post colonial predicament, one needs to take a conceptual look at the cities. This much is captured in many writings and it forms the crux of textual illustrations in the paper.
- ItemOpen AccessPredicament and Response: an Introduction(2006) Beckman, Bjorn; Adeoti, GbemisolaProgressives in Africa keep debating and agonizing over the failure of the forces on the ground to advance the material, social and political welfare of the continent, the African predicament. This article discusses the response of some of Africa's leading intellectuals-cum-writers: Soyinka, Ngugi, Achebe.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Re-making of Africa: Ayi Kwei Armah and the Narrative of an (Alter)-native Route to Development(2005) Adeoti, GbemisolaThe paper is a critical exploration of Ayi Kwei Armah's novels, with a view to analysing the author's perception of and responses to Africa's contemporary political history. Using the Beautiful Ones Are not Yet Born (1968) and Osiris Rising (1995) for in-depth study, the paper stresses the trajectory of Armah's philosophical reflections on 'the trouble with Africa' as it relates to governance and development. The study is premised on a theoretical assumption that African literary arts, oral and written, are capable of generating the necessary stimuli for change. In its fictiveness, literature proffers different perspectives of existential problems and their solutions. A politically engaged novel, the type that Armah often writes, is an apt canvas for paradigmatic interactions of contending ideas and social forces.
- ItemOpen AccessReflections on the Dominant Affective Personality of Ola Rotimi as Exemplified in His Tragic Hero Characterisation(Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 2003) Elegbeleye, O. S; Adeoti, GbemisolaThe aim of this essay therefore, is to explore the manifestation of affective bias in Ola Rotimi through his dramatics personae especially the tragic heroes. In doing this however, it contends that a careful assessment of his plays shows the presence in appropriate measure and mixture, of the cognitive, the affective and the motoric human personality dimensions. Nonetheless, there are strong indications of the dominance of affective disposition. Before discussing these indications, we, need to put in proper perspective, the psychological foundations of what is commonly referred to as "affect".