Confluence of Kinship and Divinity in Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame and Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus

Blood and affinal ties are central in any discourse on kinship. This paper grapples with representation of kinship ties within a spiritual matrix envisioned in the dramaturgy of Ola Rotimi and Sophocles. The Gods Are Not to Blame being an adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King whose storyline is continued in Oedipus at Colonus, makes it possible for the article to explore the interplay between divinity and kinship in the milieus reflected in ancient Greek and African societies. Whereas previous scholars have majorly focused on consanguinity to make sense of kinship affiliations, this article examines how Greek and African notions of spirituality impact on affinal relationships depicted in Rotimi and Sophocles’ drama. The interrogation is conducted by examining the effect of divinity on kinship from the dimension of in-laws and wives. The analysis of the three plays hinges on psychoanalytic literary theory. The paper concludes that while the involvement of the divine in human relationships enhances affinal ties, it also contributes to their disintegration when divine-centrism supersedes communitarian interests

The metatext of culture and the limits of translation in Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo’s Devil on the Cross (1982)

This paper examines Ngũgĩ’s translation of his first Gĩkũyũ language novel Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ into English, with a view to showing how the author translates Gĩkũyũ culture and idiom into English. Starting from the premise that the act of literary creation inevitably starts within a culture, the paper proceeds from the position advanced by Nadine Gordimer that literature in indigenous African languages must be confident that it can connect with the literary culture of the outside world on its own terms (2003, p. 7). The paper goes further to shows how Ngũgĩ attempts to ensure that his translation of the novel into English does not become complicit with the linguistic and cultural hegemony of the English language while at the same time making sure that the translated text is intelligible to the English reading public. This shows the primacy of the indigenous gnosis, its language and worldview in Ngũgĩ’s practice as a writer and translator and the foremost advocate of writing in African indigenous languages. The paper comes to the conclusion that Ngũgĩ’s translation of the novel into English as Devil on the Cross makes deliberate efforts to resist the absorption of the indigenous culture and language by English

Ideologising revolutionary egalitarianism in Jared Angira’s and John Clare’s poetry

Accruing knowledge, critical to understanding societal systems and structures constitutes a basal philosophical problematic to the human intellect. Notably, as disciplines that revolve around aspects of human society and culture, imaginative writing and literary studies rank among the major branches of inquiry invoked to generate ideas, solutions and initiatives for the betterment of human life. Comparatively scrutinising the ideological kinship between the poetry of Jared Angira and John Clare, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that these poems constitute latent grounds for reflection on and critical engagement with the nature of existence and articulation of social thought and ideologies. Thus, this paper is a nominal effort in appreciating their commonality as an ideological catalytic agency of changing and transforming the social and cultural fabric of life in their societies. Drawing from the critical insights of New Historicism theory, the paper employs textual analysis and historical context study towards illuminating how both poets prescribe a common ideological guiding pattern that it designates Revolutionary Egalitarianism

The crisis of post-colonial intellectual thought and knowledge production: Examining Jared Angira’s African revolutionary egalitarianism

This paper critiques Jared Angira’s poetry, and the ideology it manifests with a view to interrogating the “Marxist” label scholars attach to him. Although justifications abound for the prevailing perspectives on Angira’s ideology as “Marxist”, they are limited in their subconscious reinforcement of the traditional white-supremacist image-branding of Africa in terms of deficiency and inferiority. In further contributing to the decolonisation of knowledge generation and consumption in the Global South, the paper interprets these views as theoretically misleading and ideologically incorrect. It adopts the contrary position that Angira is an African Revolutionary Egalitarian, thus paving way for the appreciation of his uniquely African contribution to endogenous knowledge production and the intellectual armoury of African political ideas. Though African Revolutionary Egalitarianism, a term we coin to try and apprehend the ideology we read in Angira’s poetry, has Marxist inclinations, in contexture, it is not Marxism. Angira’s poems are the primary data. Besides critical evaluations on the primary texts, knowledge situated around the general context of contemporary African ideological paradigms and knowledge systems constitutes secondary data. Knowledge on the broad range of historical factors, experiences and contours which shape Angira’s worldview, personality and writing also constitute an essential category of secondary data