Browsing by Author "Afolayan, Kayode Niyi"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 41
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    Akachi- Adimora Ezeigbo’s Dancing Masks and “Snail Sense”: A Postcolonial Reading
    (The Faculty of Arts, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba- Akoko, 2019) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The paper looks at issues of nationhood and gender and the commitment of female writers in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular, to intervene through their works. There is a meeting point between theory and the art in the sense that the author evaluates Ezeigbo's theory of 'snail sense feminism through one of her poetry collections. The conclusion of the paper credits Ezeigbe's objective assessment of the social maladies in her poetry but raises questions on the practicability of the nature of negotiation mooted by the poet and theorist
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    Colonial History and the Crises of Nationhood in Ahmed Yerima’s Attahiru (1998)
    (Department of French, College of Humanities and Culture, Osun State University, Osogbo, 2022) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    Literary and cultural critics that have engaged with the evolutionary trends in African literature have always given due prominence to the impacts and manifestations of materials from history in the compositions of African writers. In Nigeria, this tradition has been entrenched in the works of pioneer modern dramatists and the generations that follow. However, although some critics have given attention to the place of historical plays in nation building, critics have mostly concentrated on the historicity of those plays in ways that seem to overshadow their contemporary relevancies. This paper, from a postcolonial theoretical perspective, focuses on Ahmed Yerima’s eponymous play, Attahiru (1998) to explain the social values of history to the contemporary challenges that confront most developing nations, especially Nigeria. The paper, in looking at the diverse manifestations of history in literary texts, situates Attahiru within a sub category of colonial history which focuses on resistance to colonial rule. However, beyond the historical value of the play, the paper engages with the mimesis of the author by concentrating on the contemporary social relevance of the play as it concerns critical issues of resistance and nation building. After a critical assessment of the crisis in the play which culminated in loss and fatal casualties for the Caliphate people, the paper concludes with due emphasis on the sacrosanct and dignified roles of the leaders and the led in the task of nation building or resistance to the social malaises that threaten human existence.
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    Common Errors in English. In Basic Communication Skills for Students of Science and Humanities
    (The Department of English, University of Ilorin, 2015) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    Language, in general terms, is always seen as a means of communication. Although in language use communication can be facilitated through signs and symbols, the spoken and written forms remain the two basic ways of communication. This article looks at the two basic ways of communication and draws the distinction between them which lies in the expertise of the reader or speaker of the language.
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    Cry from the Fringe of Hope: A Study of Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo’s Heartsongs and Waiting for Dawn
    (The Department of English, Gombe State University, Gombe, 2011) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    Arguably, gender considerations have become one of those distinctions that shore up sentiments in literary criticism. In Nigeria, with the 'infiltration' on the poetry scene by female writers like Promise Okekwe, Maria Ajima, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo and a few others, an interesting dimension that is bringing great challenges to both writers and critics of Nigerian poetry is being enacted. This paper, through Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo's Heartsongs (2009) and Waiting for Dawn (2010), assesses the creative vision of Nigerian female poets. The writer discovers that the poet sustains the outbursts against gender oppression but her social consciousness, demonstrated by an exhibition of a passion which is galvanised by her transference of historical facts into poetry, is quite overbearing. The conclusion of the paper challenges the poet's impression of hope but credits her ingenuity at charting a new course that could check gender deprivations and foster national rebirth.
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    Dedicated Verses and (Social) Interventions in the Poetry of John Pepper Clark
    (Published by Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal, 2025-02) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    Despite his transition in 2020, the ranking of contemporary poets in Nigeria today will reveal John Pepper Clark as the most prolific poet. This pedigree notwithstanding, his numerous compositions have received token attention compared to his contemporaries, such as Wole Soyinka, and other Nigerian poets of other generations. Among others, one critical reason that has been adduced for Clark’s less visibility is the eclectic nature of his poetry. This paper, in taking a closer look at some selected verses in the poetry volumes of Clark, navigates the social impulses in his poetry by isolating some of his “dedicated verses.” In validating the importance and centrality of “dedicated verses” to the poet, the paper delineated typologies and forms of his “dedicated verses” and outlined their relationship with the critical social issues in the postcolonial spaces he mirrored. The conclusion of the paper affirms the heterogonous credentials of Clark’s poetry, and argues that by paying attention to the “dedicated verses,” critics can have access, not only to the musings and inspirations which predicate his interventions on the conditions of dystopia but also get exposed to the poet’s commitment to the eradication of identified social ills and healing of those fractures that have ruptured his postcolonial space.
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    Dystopia in Transcultural Settings: Soyinka’s Beatification of Area Boy: A Lagosian Kaleidoscope
    (Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Calabar, 2018-05) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The paper focuses on Wole Soyinka's Beatification of Area Boy: A Lagos Kaleidoscope (1995) and engages the playwright's excursion into multicultural settings where there are issues of disfunction in the postcolonial space. The conclusion of the paper is that Soyinka's association with the hybrid space brings to the fore the a multidimensional approach in the negotiation for utopia in the hybridized postcolonial space
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    Earth in the Poetry of Niyi Osundare
    (Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC), Lagos, 2012) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The quest to make the world a better place to live in has always been the common concern of all disciplines. However, despite the plethora of efforts which focus on man’s survival in his environment, the currency of manifestations and use of terms like ‘tsunami’, ‘acid rain’, ‘earth quake’, ‘depletion of the ozone layer’, ‘oil spill’, ‘land slide’ and, of recent, ‘climate change’ underscore the fact that our earth is becoming more dangerous to inhabit. This paper, using the poetry of Niyi Osundare as guide, showcases the dual allegiance of literature to the discourse that bothers on climate change, culture and the earth. The first hinges on the use of nature tropes to mediate on social issues while the latter seeks to mend the ruptured relationship between man and the earth, his primordial and eternal host. The paper establishes that man in destroying nature is destroying himself and that conscious efforts must be made by man to keep the sanctity of the relationships between fellow men and nature.
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    Exits, Tributes and Patronages in Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Mixed Legacies
    (Ilorin: Department of English, 2024-04-24) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    Tribute poetry remains one of the legacies bequeathed to modern African poetry through its indigenous platform. In Nigeria, like in other African settings, the poetry genre which, in primordial times is associated with bards in courts and itinerant poets, has become a common occurrence in compositions by modern poets but not without tendencies which keep evolving. This article, in an engagement with two sections in Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo’s Mixed Legacies (2019) examines the evolution of Tribute poetry, its forms and typologies in Nigerian modern poetry. The article pays attention to the verses dedicated to accomplished academics to support the argument for a paradigm shift that renders tributes to aristocrats and political figures in the society. The article also uses the selected verses to theorise on the contents of tribute poems composed in honour of academics and makes the point that while the element of valourisation, patronage and homage remain sacrosanct, tribute to deserving academic is connected to milestones and landmark achievements as reflected in the interface between town and gown in the studied poems.
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    Exits, Tributes and Patronages in Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s Mixed Legacies
    (Ilorin: Published by Department of English, University of Ilorin., 2024) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    Tribute poetry remains one of the legacies bequeathed to modern African poetry through its indigenous platform. In Nigeria, like in other African settings, the poetry genre which, in primordial times is associated with bards in courts and itinerant poets, has become a common occurrence in compositions by modern poets but not without tendencies which keep evolving. This article, in an engagement with two sections in Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo’s Mixed Legacies (2019) examines the evolution of Tribute poetry, its forms and typologies in Nigerian modern poetry. The article pays attention to the verses dedicated to accomplished academics to support the argument for a paradigm shift that renders tributes to aristocrats and political figures in the society. The article also uses the selected verses to theorise on the contents of tribute poems composed in honour of academics and makes the point that while the element of valourisation, patronage and homage remain sacrosanct, tribute to deserving academic is connected to milestones and landmark achievements as reflected in the interface between town and gown in the studied poems.
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    Folklore and Contemporary Realities in Death and the King’s Horseman and Death, Not A Redeemer
    (Houston, USA: Published by African Diaspora Press, 2015) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The benefits of folklore to African playwrights have been very immense. From what began like mere statements of aesthetics, contemporary African playwrights have gone to seek the relevance of primordial forms to the challenges of their societies. This essay contemporizes Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman (1975) and Hope Eghagha’s Death, not A Redeemer (1998) within these tensions that raise questions on the validity of cultural modes and the needs for mediation. The writer identifies the inevitable negative impacts of contact on cultural stasis and, chronicling the lodes of contemporary challenges of African states as typified in Eghagha’s play, asserts the expediency of re-invention.
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    Folklore and Social Mediation in Olu Obafemi’s Illuminations: Songs Dance from the Belly of Time
    (Department of Modern European Languages and Linguistics, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto., 2015) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    No history of the evolution of literary forms in all cultures is complete without recourse to folklore. For Africa, the navigation of folklore into written forms has created a dual challenge which, on the one hand, has to do with the laundering of aesthetics, and on the other hand, the deployment of folklore in the interrogation of the dilemmas in the African space. This paper, using Olu Obafemi's poetry demonstrates that in seeking for a rebirth of the African folklore, writers must continue to exhibit its relevance in the contemporary space.
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    Fractured Space and the Anthology of Repression and Resistance in Sorosoke: An #Endsars Anthology (2022)
    (Faculty of Arts, university of Ilorin, 2024) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    Anthology frames have remained one of the virile platforms associated with edited works which prioritise the harvesting of poetry compositions. However, without prejudice to its plausible credentials, anthologised works that harness diverse themes through different authors are always devoid of the steam of engagement that characterises themed anthologies. This article, in focusing on themed anthologies, presents the typologies of anthologised poetry works in Africa as concrete basis for the evolutionary trends in poetry writing in Africa and Nigeria in particular. The article isolates Sorosoke: An #Endsars Anthology (2022) to engage with the themes of repression and resistance which motivate the anthologised compositions. Similarly, the article streamlines the nexus between the central themes, youth resistant encounters against repression and digitisation which now serves as alternative platform for social engagements and the arts. After demonstrating how the refractions in the studied text have revealed the social hemorrhages in postcolonial Nigeria, the article concludes by harping on tolerance and humanity as healing values for the mirrored space that is in dire need of redemption.
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    Gender Abuse and Resistance Tactics in Selected Novels of Yejide Kilanko
    (IJES, Department of English, University of Ilorin, 2024-04-24) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi; Oluwatoyin, A.O.
    An overview of the evolution of literary writings in prose, in Nigeria, will reveal that the issues of gender have been given prominent emphasis by novelists. In the predominant thrust that expose violence against women in mirrored ordeals, the perspectives have horned the victimisation of women in the context of patriarchal settings. Even though women’s roles have since been reinvented, it remains the lens that has refracted gender prejudices in most Nigerian novels. This study, using Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo’s Snail Sense Feminist theory, engages with Yejide Kilanko’s Daughters Who Walk This Path (2014), Chasing Butterflies (2018) and A Good Name (2021) to reexamine the issue of gender-based violence. The study identified with the over-flogged issues about the deprivations suffered by women but revealed the author’s dimension that sees women not as absolute victims of gender violence. The conclusion of the study not only harnessed the thought of the novelist that sees both genders as victims of violence but also accredited the thesis of complementarity as the panacea to patriarchy induced victimizations or frictions in gender relations.
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    Gender Issues and Social Crossings in Maria Ajima’s Cycles and Thri…ll
    (Kraft Books, Ibadan, 2012) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The paper looks at issues concerning the rights of women mirrored by Maria Ajima in her poetry. Given the circumstances which includes the lethargic approach of women themselves, that a lot still needs to be desired if women's rights would be actualized in Africa.
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    Gender, Nationalism and Other Interventions in Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo’s Haiku Poems
    (DUJEL, Department of English, Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, 2024-03-28) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The focus on form and content has remained one of the major ways adopted, universally, by critics interested in poetry studies. In modern Nigerian poetry, however, the experimentation with forms, which, have tentacles in home grown (oral) sources and external borrowed forms, has received copious attention. This attention is shared between oral and western forms relegating other forms that modern Nigerian poets have adopted in their engagements with the postcolonial conversations in Nigeria. This article examines the “haiku poems” in Akachi Adimora- Ezeigbo’s Dancing Masks (2013), Mixed Legacies (2019) and Broken Bodies, Damaged Souls and Other Poems (2022) to demonstrate the interface between form and content in modern Nigerian poetry. The article interrogates the popular premise of “generationalising” modern Nigerian poets and fashions out standards that rightly place modern Nigerian poets in their respective generations. The postcolonial premise of the study unravels how the poet’s penchant for the “haiku form” has objectified the dystopias within and outside her homeland. The conclusion of the article identifies the ambivalent texture of the poet’s haiku stanzas as against the dominant unified focus on gender in her prose titles. .
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    Haemorrhages and Healings in Nnimmo Bassey’s We Thought It Was Oil But It Was Blood (2008) and I Will Not Dance To Your Beat (2011)
    (DUJEL, Department of English, Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State., 2024-03-27) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi; Okedi, Sylvia Ojoma
    No doubt, the crisis of ecology has remained one of the topics that has received prominent attention in the evolution of modern poetry in Nigeria. The space of reference has always been the Niger Delta area whose serenity has been ruptured by multinationals in search of oil in that sub region. For stated reasons, poetry has become the most responsive to the issues. However, a clear line can be drawn between the traditional/ passive and radical/ militant poets who have involved in the engagement. This article is an ecocritical inquiry that engages with Nnimmo Bassey who exemplifies the second categorisation in the study of his We thought it was oil but it was blood (2008) and I Will Not Dance To Your Beat (2011). This article distils the peculiarities in Nnimmo Bassey’s engagement which lie in his hybrid model that localises and universalises mans’ infractions against nature on the one hand and his commitment to truce on the other hand. The conclusion of the article disagrees with the poet’s conservationist proposal but aligns with his prescription of a meaningful and practicable dialogue that will assert the complementary roles in the interactions between man and nature.
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    Literature: Meaning, Aspects and Forms- A Nigerian and African Perspective
    (Department of General Studies, Landmark University, 2017) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The article examines the meaning of literature, its forms and genres with peculiar references. perspectives are drawn from the Nigerian and African milieu
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    Madiba: Between Dialectics of Alienation and the Praxes of Social Reformation
    (The Department of English and Literature, University of Benin, 2013) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The space occupied by South African literature has always been valued within the matrix of historical experience. One of the perspectives that give attention to this is the categorization of engagements in Theory of African Literature (1989) where Chidi Amuta delienates between radical and liberal sentiments in the creative impulses the exhibited the ordeals of the apartheid era. This paper, against the background of the crisis of leadership in Nigeria takes into account the contemporary global relevance of the South African experience by bringing into focus titles like Wole Soyinka's Ogun Abibiman (1976) and Mandela's Earth and other Poems (1989), John Pepper Clark's Mandela and Other poems (1988), Ogaga Ifowodo's Madiba (2003) and Sam Omatseye's Madela's bones and Other poems (2009), The writer's conclusion, in this re-appraisal of the Mandela experience, raises questions that seek antidote to social crises beyond the borders of leadership
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    Metaphysics of the Dead and Existence in the Poetry of John Pepper Clark
    (NAWA: Department of Communication and Languages Faculty of Commerce, Human Sciences and Education, Namibia University of Science and Technology, Windhoek, Namibia., 2024-06-21) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    Critical investigations into the works of John Pepper Clark, have always paid attention to the social thrusts of his works and his fidelity to the Nigerian landscape which he has copiously deployed in the heterogeneous corpus of his poetry. However, the social vents of his poetry have become the most controversial on account of an alleged token attention, inconsistency or disinterestedness with the social traumas that pervade his space. This article conducts a postcolonial study on one of the ardent subjects that pervade the poetry of John Pepper Clark. While identifying with the fact that responses to social traumas, through an engagement with the political issues of the society is just one of the purposes of poetry, this paper identifies with Clark’s philosophy of poetry which is mostly concerned with the subject of life and existence discernible, mostly, in his thoughts on death and dying. After looking at the diverse tentacles of the subject, the paper concludes that Clark’s death consciousness has not only validated some Africanised values that his discussions about death and dying are his moralising agents through which he dispenses mitigating pills on the social ills that have pervaded his postcolonial space
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    Morality and the Burden of Change: Between Ayi Kwei Armah, Chinua Achebe Chukwuemeka Ike
    (2016) Afolayan, Kayode Niyi
    The paper looks at the personal and collective experiences of the novelists studied in relations to the negative conditions in the spaces they have mirrored. The conclusion of the paper places emphasis on the need for synthesis between ideology and morality in the quest for nation building