The Dramatization Of History Using Women Of Owu And Morountodun
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The Dramatization Of History Using Women Of Owu And Morountodun
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
Background of the study.
The use of history as a rich resource material in African literary creation dates back to the beginning of contemporary African literature. This trend reaffirms the inevitable convergence of history and literature. In the symbiotic relationship, history provides literature with factual events from the past, while literature lends richness to these facts.
Regardless, it is believed that the use of history in writing has evolved in various ways across literary periods and/or canons. While there are writers, primarily within the leading African literary coterie, who revel in the conventional historiography of “render it and leave it at that,” there are also writers (primarily in the emergent radical canon) who use history primarily for the purpose of dialectical dissection.
This paper tries to analyse the radical use of history by writers of the later canon. The goal is to understand how the poem uses the historical material of the struggle in the ancient Yoruba Kingdom of Owu to convey its revolutionary message.
Since time immemorial, the relationship between literature and history has been inextricably linked over the world. Literature, as an art that enjoys universal conceptualisation as a mirror of society, is sometimes designed to reflect in retrospect through a writer’s purposeful reliance to true occurrences from the past.
This appears to be a reflection of the writer’s appreciation for history. According to Philip Bagu, David Gordon captured this fact as follows: “literature sources itself from such historical events in the same way it seeks to affect the social realities of the present” (The Ker Review 44–55). This viewpoint also supports Fischer’s thesis, as stated in Akachi Ezeigbo, that “literature is born of reality and acts back upon reality” (10).
As another evidence of multidisciplinary convergence, orthodox historians have stated that events in the past are taken into account with the primary goal of relating them to the present for the common good. For example, Arifalo believes that “history is part and parcel of the general philosophy of life.”
It is concerned with the coherence of the past and the present, rather than the past in and of itself. In summary, history is viewed as an ongoing interaction between the past and the present” (qtd. in Oguntomisin and Ajayi, 25). Given this, it is not surprising that a historical truth serves as the source or context for a literary work.
This trend is still very strong over the world today. A genuine sense of history has demonstrated that the use of history as a source of literary innovation in Africa predates the emergence of modern African literature.
This notion is easily supported by the fact that orature, which is an integral part of African life, draws on individual heroic feats, communal epochs, and other events in the cultures’ history. All of this existed long before the literacy culture, which was the forerunner of modern African literature.
While modern African literature has benefited from the abundant historical reservoir, the various canonical leanings held by different writers who use historical resources have influenced such writers’ diverse approaches to the sociopolitical and economic purposes that such past events are intended to serve.
As a result, most African literary forerunners who have used historical events have a tendency to simply celebrate the exploits of the epoch’s dramatis personae. In such circumstances, a celebration of individual heroism, which may include negative human ideals, grows. This literary paradigm is consistent with the ideals of bourgeois historiography.
This category includes Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka (1926), a fictional reconstruction of the epic deeds of Shaka, the great king of the old Zulu Kingdom. Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi (1971) is also cast in the mould; it is a dramatic reenactment of Yoruba history, specifically the insurrection conducted against the then-Alaafin of Oyo by his own generalissimo, Kurunmi.
Also closely related to this in history is Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), which poignantly dramatises the historical account of the then-white colonisers’ undue interference in Yoruba rites of passage, particularly the cultural burial of the Alaafin in the Old Oyo Empire.
The list is long. In all such works, rather than delving into the socioeconomic dynamics of the issues at stake at the particular epochs being recreated with a view to cross-examining contemporary realities, what we have is, in Osundare’s words, “an overwhelming nostalgia about the past, a helpless jeremiad about the present, but hardly a suggestion as to the way out of the wilderness, hardly a vision of tomorrow” (25).
Following in the footsteps of this literary canon are a few contemporaries as well as many emerging ones, each with a distinct ideological perspective on history. The paradigm change was obvious when revolutionary writers created works that drew resources from the historical reservoir but took a practically radical approach.
Such works use history in the same way that others do, but they also conduct a post-mortem on history along dialectical lines and even show the path forward.
In this way, their use of history as a literary resource has a revolutionary tenor that cannot be found in either the cultural nationalist or critical realism canon. They take seriously Ngugi’s admonition in Writers in Politics (1981) that “the writer should not only explain the world, but change it” (75).
It’s no surprise that, with the release of his major novel, God’s Bits of Wood (1960), Sembene Ousmane is regarded as a trailblazer of revolutionary literature that drew heavily on the resources of history among African literary forefathers.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o is another. His The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) is exceptional in this regard. Our target writer, Femi Osofisan, stands out among emerging African writers who make innovative use of historical resources. Osofisan, a key figure in African radical literature, is well known for his virtually unprecedented dramaturgical experiments.
Aside from his exceptional ability to exploit history for revolutionary purposes, he is also a superb metatextualist. Interestingly, his Women of Owu (WOO henceforth), our sampling work, has the dual orientation of being a historical product on the one hand and an artistic construct modelled after a classical literary output, The Trojan Women (TTW henceforth) by Euripides.
Clearly, the text’s unique context has the potential to raise complications. In other words, how has metatextuality been effectively included into the dramatic piece? Are there linked experiences that have united to accelerate the play’s development and transform it into a true historical product?
According to Agbasiere, Jullie (2011:26), African drama and theatre began to arise on the African continent when the British attempted to impose their way of life on Africans. They brought ideals such as religion, education, and economic transactions, transforming Africa into a raw material source from which they created their solid land.
Because of the situation at the time of the arrival of the British, Africans changed their lifestyle and wore different clothing. Though Africans had their own forms of dramatisation (folklore), their experiences with the arrival of the British were constantly reflected in African drama and theatre that was borrowed from Europeans.
The origins of African drama and theatre can be traced back to ancient, historical, and contemporary dramatic forms in Africa, which span from sacred or ritual performances to dramatised narrative, literary drama, and the modern synthesis of scripted theatre with traditional performance practices.
The diversity of performances is due to the vast dispersion of cultures and traditions within each country. Many of these societies have extensive oral and ritual traditions, some of which have lasted into modern society.
As a result, national boundaries rarely reflect traditional territory. As a result, people facing difficult political or societal situations have turned to traditional performances as a means of self-expression and empowerment.
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