FOLKLORE AND CULTURAL IDENTITY: A STUDY IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S THINGS FALL APART

Abstract

Studies on folklore as the art, narratives, epistemology, and practices of a particular ethnic population (human society) are gaining much scholarly attention as an academic discipline in the humanities today and have subsequently drawn much attention to the unquestionable indigenous ethical and moral episteme it carries up within the oral (or written) medium in Africa. Despite all these, it does not seem to receive the attention it deserves from Eurocentric discourse as the recurring characteristics that enable the recognition of a group by others or themselves from their own perspectives or paradigm. In this regard, identity is seen as a characteristic of the self that is determined by the social and historical context within which that self operates. This strongly suggests that identity is necessarily generated and constructed through some form of dialectic-internal and external-within a particular environment. Logically, it therefore, follows that identity is constructed and developed through social interaction to showcase that it is not an innate quality of an individual. This study seeks to draw attention to the richness as well as the uniqueness of cultural norms and values which indigenous knowledge entails by exploring conceptual frameworks suggested by postcolonial studies in an attempt to show that African literature-oral or written-is not a series of reversals, inversions as well as subversions of European forms. In fact, this validates the significance of folklore in African literature because of its sole expression of the creative writer’s socio-cultural ethos. The hypothesis of the study is that art and literature offer an analogical mirror to cultural processes in an attempt to show that African novelists rely heavily on the lore of their people. This involves textual analysis of some aspects of folklore viz. myths, legends, folktales, proverbs, riddles, superstitions and the art of story-telling as can be found in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in an effort to show that folklore is not only bound up in memory and histories; but it is also tied to vibrant living traditions and creative expression due to its incentive, didactic and aesthetic concerns. It is passed down from one generation to another through word of mouth as it is unconditionally kept active by the people in the culture. It concludes that though actual forms of folklore have varied intricate functions, it has become one of the many ways Africans communicate who they are; though the culture of today is much more polycentric or pluralistic.