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AESTHETIC OF AFRICANISM IN CAMARA
LAYE’S THE AFRICAN CHILD AND THE RADIANCE OF THE KING
ABSTRACT
It was obviously vital that African should be
treated for culture preservation. This research attempted the exposition of
Camara Laye’s The African Child and The Radiance of the King with a view to
appreciate the African Aesthetics in the novels. Formalism approach is used to
critically study the aesthetics in the selected African novels and we made wide
consultation of books on African aesthetics. We observed that with all rapidly
changing conditions of life today, African aesthetic such as circumcision,
rituals and rites, sacrifices are in a very grave danger of getting lost
forever, unless something is done to redeem this situation. Aesthetics of any
society should not be taken with levity.
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Purpose of
the study
Scope and
limitation of the study
Justification
of the study
Methodology
of the study
Structure of
thesis
CHAPTER TWO
Literary
critic’s view about the author
CHAPTER
THREE
Introduction
Ritual of
passage in The African Child
Tom-Tom and
Rice Harvesting in The African Child
African
Totemism in The African Child
Traditional
music and dance in The African Child
Respect in
The African Child
Traditional
Occupation in The African Child
Religion and
rituals in The African Child
Traditional
occupation in The African Child
CHAPTER FOUR
Cultural
Rainbow in The Radiance of the King
CHAPTER FIVE
Introduction
Summary
Findings
Conclusion
Bibliography
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Literature
always depends on human reality, thus all literary works depict human actual
situations. So, Literature is a mirror which reflects man’s actual life in the
society where he is found. Literature also borrows from history and relies on
everyday events. Awotunde (1999:7) asserts that literary critics, poets,
authors and playwrights are engaged in the process of adapting, inventing and
recreating certain life situations to sustain the make belief and the suspense
that are part of the key ingredients of literature. Literature is characterized
by its aesthetics or pleasure and its edification.
Literature,
like all other art forms, draws on human experience and tries to reflect the
same and communicate it to man in an order and artistic form. It can also imply
an artistic use of word for the sake of art alone. Omotayo Oloruntoba Oju
(1999) observes that
The term
literature may be used to refer to any material in written form or any other
material whose features tend themselves to literary appreciation or appraisal…
The term in a specialized sense refers to work of art in any of the established
literary genres, prose, poetry and drama.
Any good
definition of literature therefore, cannot do without the oral composition of a
community from which the written and established genres and still emanates
according to society changes.
Also, Akande
and Ibrahim define Literature as
Any creative
imagination which uses a specialized form of language and style for effective
communication in prose, poetry and drama.
A modern
definition of Literature by Terry Eagleton (1973) says:
Literature
is a liberating force, freeing us from inherent shackles placed upon us by the
society. Literary criticism is therefore born out of the struggle against a
loss of culture and its feature becomes defined as a struggle against the
foreseen bourgeois state and it has no predetermined future.
Aesthetics
refers to the appreciation or appraised of value. Whenever a judgement is made
about the nature, worth or significance of a phenomenon, an aesthetic
appreciation is being made. In a more narrow sense, aesthetics refers to the philosophical
contemplation of a work of art. Thus, a discipline, aesthetics is concerned
with the appropriate modes of evaluation of works of art. An unending debate in
aesthetics is: which aspect of the object, or phenomenon being evaluated should
be assigned a great weight of appreciation. The two main elements involved in
any such appreciation are the form or appearance of the object or phenomenon on
the other hand. Correspondingly, there are two extreme aesthetic attitudes:
aestheticism and utilitarianism or functionalism.
Africaness
refers to elements in works of art that express themes, ideas or notions,
aesthetic features and objects relating to Africa. Africaness is predominant in
the literature of the diaspora in foreign languages. Africaness include the
deliberate infusion of African linguistic and non-linguistic elements into
literature to give a natural touch. At a moderate level, such Africaness is
seen as representing the African aesthetic matrix. At the extreme, such
Africaness may be an expression of cultural nationalism. In Literature of
Africans in Diaspora, Africaness takes the form of the theme of the black
beauty and of the African homeland. It is often a romanticization of the
African heritage.
According to
Oloruntoba-Oju (1999:213) similarities between African and Caribbean aesthetics
have been demonstrated at various levels because of the numerous African
elements preserved in several sectors of the diaspora. One thing stands out
when one reads a novel by an African on Africa. It’s the fact that it is
dominated by element that reveal not only the cultural realities of its people
but also the peculiarities of the region the novelists dwells in furthermore, a
particular ethnic community’s belief and practice reflects in its actions and reactions
to issues and life generally.
Therefore,
African Aesthetic seldom appears in literature instead such words such as
‘Negritude’. The African personality, the African outlook and more recently,
the black aesthetic. The African world views are more common. A large body of
literature has grown up around most of these terms, particularly ‘Negritude’
Susan Vogel
from the New York Centre for African art described an African aesthetic in
African work as having the following characteristics: youthfulness, other
African aesthetics include myth, legend, oral tradition, history, poetry,
folktales, folklores, riddles and jokes, song, performance narrative etc.
From the
above definition, it is clearly seen that literature and aesthetics has a
relationship, since aesthetics also has it impact on African literature,
therefore, these refers to element in works of art that express theme, and
ideas or notions relating to Africa. In order to examine and know what exactly
African literature is, there are certain things one has to guide against and
these according to Achebe are known as common fallacies which we must avoid.
Achebe goes further to say: (Achebe:13)
The first is
to see African literature as so different and special and so removed from the
realm of other literatures that it can share no common approaches with them.
In as much
as one would not see African literature as different and special, it is
therefore logical to accept the fact that literature, being a product of human
culture, cannot develop in a vacuum, rather it has to develop in a tradition or
traditions.
So the
emergence of the writing culture in Africa and the foreign traditions on the
African literature, no doubt gave birth to the literature of colonial
experience, which eventually turned the Africa literature to a protest against
colonialism and its effects. These were literary works purely concerned with
cultural rehabilitation and thus grew in response to the cultural values of
Africa.
Example of
such works include Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), Amos Tutuola’s
Palm Wine Drinkard (1952), Peter Abraham Mine boy (1946), Bayo Adebowale’s The
Virgin (1986), Camara Laye’s African Child (1953) and The Radiance of the King
(1954). These are the books written to show case the rich cultural traditions
of the Africans. According to Dada, they were historical or ethnographical
designed to explain African culture to the foreign reader.
With these,
it has become very difficult to separate African literature from its root
because day in day out, the tradition of the past still continues to wield much
influence on African literature. No doubt then that Ngugi Wa Thiongo asserted
in article on “The African Writer and his Past” that:
The African
in spite of his modernity, has never been wholly severed from the cradle of a
continuous culture from folklore, tales, proverbs, riddles and all oral
components that made him what he is today.
Camara
Laye’s The African Child (1953) and The Radiance of the King (1954) for
example, can be conveniently classified into the volume of contemporary African
writings of the prose traditions, which is fully loaded with the traditional
value of the past.
It is
clearly seen that different scholars have tried to look at what African
aesthetics is and some uses fictional works to show this aesthetics value in
his works. Among this numerous authors, Camara Laye uses virtually all his
novels to portray this concept especially his African Child (1953) and The
Radiance of the King (1954).
Camara Laye
as an African writer uses this two novels to disengage the mind of the
westerners who believed that Africa is cultureless. His African Child (1953)
reveals the peaceful and happy childhood of the boy Laye. He traces the hero’s
life from about the age of six when he attended the Koranic school, the time he
graduated from the technical College to finish his studies in France. The author laid special emphasis on love,
respect and concern for one another in the village community. He dwells on the
communal nature of African societies in a way to show the European reader that
Africa societies are very different from the individualistic societies of
Europe.
The Radiance
of the King (1954) tells a long story but straight forward story of a while
man’s adventure in a particular corner of Africa. The hero Clarence has gambled
all his money among his fellow Europeans. He owes money to all of them and he
is thrown out of the hotel because he has no money to pay, therefore, action,
it is seen that Africans are very accommodating and they do not discriminate as
the while does.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
As earlier
said, literary works of art are studied by considering the aesthetic and
pleasurable value of such works. This refers rather to a sense of aesthetic
appreciation, that is, the feeling that a particular work of art satisfies or
fulfills the expectation that the reader or audience brings to it. In this
study, attempt will be made on the examination of African aesthetics in the
works of Camara Laye. The exploration of Africaness in his work will be on the
use of African aesthetics prominent in The Radiance of the King (1954) and The
African Child (1953).
SCOPE AND LIMITATION
The focus of
this study will be on the use of African aesthetic in Camara Laye’s The African
Child (1953) and The Radiance of the King (1954). Apart from some cursory
references to some texts of similar thematic thrust, this study will be limited
to observation made from aesthetic appraisal. Analysis therefore will be made
available by a close reading of the two novels.
JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY
This work is
to examine how Camara Laye emphasizes the conscious effort to capture the
traditional tones of speech and action with which he draws his audience closer
to his novel. His infusion of African elements like songs, dance, customs,
beliefs, traditions, divination, dance, praise singing, proverbs, idioms and so
on into his novel will also be analyzed. He intentionally uses these elements
to bring out the beauty and aesthetics of his dramatic works and evoke a burst
of emotion from the audience. This work is chosen in order to show the
westerners that Africans are of great cultural heritage.
METHODOLOGY
In this
study, all the elements of Africaness and aesthetics employed by the author
within the scope of this study will be carefully examined. In doing this, the
formalist approach to literature will be used. Formalism developed and
flourished in Russia in the twentieth century. It was propounded by Immanuel
Kant, Bishop Joseph Butler and W.D Ross. The formalist theory looks at the
aesthetics of any literary work. Therefore since this work aims at bringing out
the beauty in The African child (1953) and The Radiance of the king (1954).
Therefore the theory is the most suitable for this work.
STRUCTURE OF THESIS
This thesis
contains five chapters. Chapter one by way of introduction capture matters like
the definition of key terms, purpose of the study, scope and limitation of the
study justification of the study as well as the methodology of the study. In
chapter two, perspectives on Camara Laye’s works are examined under the
literature review. The title of chapter three is Africanism and social in Camara
Laye’s African Child (1953), the chapter considers the African aesthetics and
its element in the novel. Our concern in chapter four, under the title: Toward
a Cultural rainbow in Camara Laye’s The Radiance of the King. The chapter five
of the thesis is the summary and conclusion of the research.
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