AMOS TUTUOLA

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AMOS TUTUOLA

• The truth is an offense, but not a sin!
• Is he who laugh last, is he who win!
• -----Bob Marley

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Biography

• Amos Tutuola was born in the Nigerian city of
  Abeokuta in 1920. His parents were Christian
  cocoa farmers, of the Yoruba race. At the age of
  twelve he began to attend the Anglican Central
  School in his home town.

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Biography cont.

• His formal education lasted only five years, as
  he had to leave school when his father died in
  order to learn a profession. He went to Lagos to
  train as a blacksmith in 1939.

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Biography cont.

• From 1942 to 1945 he practised his trade for the
  Royal Air Force in Nigeria. After this he worked
  as a messenger for the Department of Labour in
  Lagos, then as a storekeeper for Radio Nigeria in
  Ibadan. He was married and had six children.

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His Works

• Though his native language is Yoruba, and his
  formal education never extended beyond elementary
  school, Tutuola has written all of his novels in
  English. Tutuola wrote the first draft of The
  Palm-Wine Drinkard, a romance built out of
  elements from Yoruba folklore. It was published
  by Faber and Faber in London in 1952, and is
  considered the first of all Anglo-phone African
  novels. Due to the critical and popular success
  of this novel, Tutuola became the first Nigerian
  novelist to win international acclaim. The
  Palm-Wine Drinkard was followed by My Life in the
  Bush Ghosts (1954) Simbi and the Satyr of the
  Dark Jungle (1955) The Brave African Huntress
  (1958) Feather Woman of the Jungle (1962)
  Ajaiyi and His Inherited Poverty (1967) The
  Witch Herbalist of the Remote Town (1981) The
  Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts (written in the
  late 1940s, but not published until 1982)
  Pauper, Brawler, Slanderer (1987) and The
  Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories(1990).

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Nigeria

• Five hundred years before Christ, there arose in
  central Nigeria a culture that was among the most
  advanced and richest of the ancient world.

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Nigeria and Yorubaland

• In 1861, Nigeria was made a British colony and in
  1906, land east of the Niger River was
  incorporated into the colony.

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Nigeria

• In 1960 Nigeria declared independence but the
  British system of colonialism had done nothing to
  unify Nigeria or prepare it for independence. The
  country experienced difficulties in the 1960s as
  the various ethnic groups making up the country
  battled for control.

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Nigeria

• Presidential elections in April 2003 did nothing
  to quell international concerns about Nigeria's
  stability. It seems this is once again a
  make-or-break time for Nigerian democracy

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Yoruba Religion

• In addition to the worship of one God, named
  Olodumare, the Yoruba worship dozens of deities
  known as "Orishas" who are personified aspects of
  nature and spirit. The principal orishas include
  Eleggua, Oggun, Ochosi, Obatala, Yemaya, Oshun,
  Shango, Oya, Babalu Aiye, and Orula.

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Yoruba and Santeria

• Orisha worship was spread to the new world
  through the slave trade. In order to preserve
  their religious traditions against Catholic
  repression, the African slaves syncretized the
  orishas with Catholic saints. Thus Shango came to
  be depicted as Sta. Barbara Obatala as Our Lady
  of Mercy, etc.

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Language

• My quarrel with English language has been that
  the language reflected none of my experience. But
  now I begin to see the matter in quite another
  way Perhaps the language was not my own because
  I had never attempted to use it, had only learned
  to imitate it. If this were so, then it might be
  made to bear the burden of my experience if I
  could find the stamina to challenge it, and me,
  to such a test.
  ---James Baldwin

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If it failed to give them a song, it at least
gave them a tongue for sighing. Chinua Achebe

• Achebe notes, in an article dated 1965, that
  colonialism provided a way for a multitude of
  tribes and dialects to communicate. By extension,
  the hated colonial tongues have become
  instruments for Africans to communicate about
  themselves. Achebe states, Those of us who have
  inherited the English Language may not be in a
  position to appreciate the value of the
  inheritancewe may go on resenting itas part of
  a packagethat included atrocities of reacial
  arrogance and prejudicebut let us not, in
  rejecting the evil, throw out the good with it.

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(No Transcript)
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Analyzing Tutuola

• The balance of this presentation rests on one
  essay Amos Tutuola and the Colonial Carnival
  written by Stephen M Tobias and published in
  Research in African Literatures, Summer, 1999.

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Dylan Thomas on Tutuola

• brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching story,
  or series of stories, written in young English by
  a West African, about the journey of an expert
  and devoted palm-wine drinkard through a
  nightmare of indescribable adventures.

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More Critical Comment

• Anthony West, a critic for the New Yorker, went
  so far as to say that in reading it, One catches
  a glimpse of the very beginning of literature,
  that moment when writing at last seizes and pins
  down the myths and legends of an analphabetic
  culture.
• ---Anthony West Shadow and Substance The
  New Yorker 5 Dec. 1953

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Writing in English?

• In his book Tutuola struggles to mold and shape
  his hero's world into one that makes sense.
  Through the manipulation and reformulation of a
  foreign tongue Tutuola attempts to refamiliarize
  and reclaim the environment. This linguistic
  struggle is central for any colonized or formerly
  colonized culture whose language system has been
  supplanted by that of its colonizers
• In developing such a usage, Tutuola invents and
  employs what can be described as an
  "interlanguage" a regionally specific version of
  English.

• In answer to criticism that Tutuola's English is
  frequently "wrong," it can be countered that the
  writer's discourse constitutes a separate and
  genuine linguistic system (see Ashcroft 67). The
  development of such a system helps to displace
  standard English from its privileged place at a
  colonial or postcolonial country's cultural
  center. Tutuola's use and manipulation of both
  language and the fantastic play pivotal and
  complementary roles in his formulation of a
  discourse of resistance.

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Achebe on Tutuola

• I have indicated somewhat offhandedly that the
  national literature of Nigeria and of many other
  countries in Africa is, or will be, written in
  English.
• There is certainly a great advantage in writing
  in a world language.
• I have said enough to give an indication of my
  thinking on the importance of the world language
  that history has forced down our throats.

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Achebe on Tutuola

• The African writershould aim at fashioning an
  English that is at once universal and able to
  carry his peculiar experience.
• In this respect, Amos Tutuola is a natural. A
  good instinct has turned his apparent linguistic
  limitation into a weapon of great strength

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Western Influences

• the book borrows heavily from traditional Yoruba
  orature. Antithetically, its plot's structural
  basis, that of an extended quest on which a hero
  must do battle with various allegorically
  conceived monsters, was probably derived from
  Western sources--possibly from Bunyan's Pilgrim's
  Progress. Conjecture that Tutuola was influenced
  by Bunyan is supported by his admission to having
  read the poet while a student at the British
  school where he was educated
• Tutuola's use of capitalized chapter headings
  such as .
• also hints at a Western influence. Tutuola
  probably derived this practice either from
  reading boy's adventure books or
  eighteenth-century novels, or quite possibly from
  reading English-style newspapers. The headings,
  as well as much of his phrasing throughout the
  book, without question possess both the
  appearance and tone of tabloid headlines.

• "THE INVESTIGATOR'S WONDERFUL WORK IN THE SKULL'S
  FAMILY'S HOUSE,"
• "OUR LIFE WITH THE FAITHFUL MOTHER IN THE WHITE
  TREE,
• "TO SEE THE MOUNTAIN-CREATURES WAS NOT DANGEROUS
  BUT TO DANCE WITH THEM WAS THE MOST DANGEROUS"

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Bahktin, Rabelais and the Carnivalesque

• Bakhtin describes the way that invoking the
  carnivalesque challenges the dominant
  social-political paradigm, the normal way of
  living
• As opposed to the official feast, one might say
  that the carnival celebrated temporary liberation
  from the prevailing truth and form of the
  established order it marked the suspension of
  all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and
  prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of
  time, the feast of becoming, change, and renewal.
  It was hostile to all that was immortalized and
  completed.

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Rebellion and Parody

• In The Dialogical Imagination, Bakhtin offers an
  explanation of the social function of parody,
  which hints at why Tutuola may have been
  attracted both to this genre and to discourse
  blending in general. Moreover, Bakhtin's theories
  may help account for the reason Tutuola chooses
  to adopt a comical anti-heroic character-narrator.
  Bakhtin suggests that in the parodic discourse
  of the public sphere, that of the street or
  marketplace, or in this particular case, quite
  possibly, the school yard or soccer field,
• the heteroglossia of the clown sounded forth,
  ridiculing all "languages" and dialects there
  developed ... street songs, folksayings,
  anecdotes, where there was no language-center at
  all, where there was to be found a lively play
  with the "languages" of poets, scholars, monks,
  knights and others, where all "languages" were
  masks and where no language could claim to be an
  authentic, incontestable face. -- Bahktin

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Rebellion and Parody

• Therefore, it may be argued that it is The
  Palm-Wine Drinkard's monstrous anti-realism that
  makes it such a powerful vehicle for
  sociopolitical critique.
• Unquestionably, the book is fantastical, but
  ultimately its carnivalesque qualities provide a
  useful and effective kind of "fantasy space" from
  which to critique the colonial world.

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The Complete Gentleman

• I could not blame the lady for following the
  Skull as a complete gentleman to his house at
  all. Because if I were a lady, no doubt I would
  follow him to wherever he would go, and still as
  I was a man I would jealous him more than that
• If Tutuola's version of this story is read
  allegorically, in a manner informed by the
  circumstances that surrounded it composition,
  then it can be interpreted as a warning about
  some of the dangers and temptations offered by
  colonial/transitional life in Nigeria. Through
  his retelling of this tale Tutuola suggests that
  although Western ideas and projects might at
  first seem tempting and attractive, these things
  ultimately prove little more than a deceptive
  facade