Revamping through History: A New Historicist REading of Obafemi's Running Dreams and Binebai's Drums of the Delta

Abstract

Africa, like other parts of the world, has been beset with various human and natural mischances. This ranges from religious crisis, ethnic uprisings, disease outbreak, environmental degradation, human desecration, oppression and injustices which are detrimental to both human and societal development. The Nigerian society, as a growing nation, has witnessed its own fair share of some of these debacles. As a humanist and interdisciplinary field of study, literature and literary writers have explored and presented the different crisis in their works in various ways. An emerging trend of societal representation in literary circle is the recourse to history and historical elements. This paper thus investigates Obafemi and Binebai’s adoption of history in their works Running Dreams and Drums of the Delta respectively using the new historicist theoretical approach. The analysis reveals that both Obafemi and Binebai reconstruct history to present the connection between past actions and present circumstance in the society and also represent forgotten societal ideals which would serve as indices for revolutionary struggles. The paper thus concludes that the revival of history by the two playwrights is a call to understand and embrace historical facts which would serve as steps to societal rejuvenation.