Yoruba Green-Proverbs in English: A Green Study of Niyi Osundare's Midlife

In an attempt to promote African culture and tradition, current literary trends have been witnessing an increasing use of proverbs in African writing. This study of proverbs has application in a number of fields, especially in environmental studies and literature and those who study folklore and literature explore proverbs for its cultural and aesthetic values. Green/nature proverbs are becoming important literary resource tool today and thus our objective is to explore how Osundare employs nature proverbs derived from the Yoruba language and how he creatively deploys these to promote his poetic vision of the natural environment. Proverbs in Midlife are largely derived from Yoruba proverbs and Osundare being a nature poet undertakes a green inquiry into proverbs derived from Yoruba rhetoric and prosody. In this collection, we examine how the poet in question deplores proverbs that focus on fauna, flora and landscape and also how he employs nature images as metaphor to comment on social concerns