Abstract

The Yorùbá are one of the major ethnic groups in West Africa, with Nigeria being the homeland for the majority. The Yorùbá poet Niyi Osundare’s work is influenced by the Yorùbá animist worldview, which venerates the spoken word. Such influence is evident in his depiction of the spoken word as an extraordinary sort of person, a superperson. One central artistic feature of his poetry is the adaptation of devices of Yorùbá oral literature. Therefore, most studies of his poetry privilege its link to Yorùbá oral poetry. However, the use of devices found in Yorùbá folktales in his verse has not been subjected to detailed study. One implication of this is that, despite magical realism being a major artistic feature of Osundare’s poetry, critics have largely overlooked the fact that he is a magical realist poet. In his collection The Word Is an Egg (Ibadan: Kraft, 2000), Osundare relies substantially on the folktale as a model to frame his message on the personhood of the spoken word. In this article, I use the lens of magical realism to explore how he uses an adapted Yorùbá folktale to depict the message that the spoken word is a superperson who deserves to be treated with respect.

摘要

约鲁巴人是西非的主要族群之一，尼日利亚是大多数人的家园。约鲁巴诗人 Niyi Osundare 的作品受到约鲁巴万物有灵论世界观的影响，这种世界观崇尚口语。这种影响在他将口语描述为一种非凡的人，一个超人时显而易见。他诗歌的一个核心艺术特征是对约鲁巴语口头文学手法的改编。因此，大多数关于他的诗歌的研究都将其与约鲁巴口头诗歌联系起来。然而，尚未对他的诗歌中约鲁巴民间故事中的手法的使用进行详细研究。这其中的一个含义是，尽管魔幻现实主义是奥桑达尔诗歌的主要艺术特征，但评论家们在很大程度上忽视了他是一位魔幻现实主义诗人的事实。在他的收藏中Word Is an Egg（伊巴丹语：Kraft，2000），Osundare 在很大程度上依赖于民间故事作为模型来构建他关于口头语言人格的信息。在这篇文章中，我使用魔幻现实主义的镜头来探索他如何使用改编的约鲁巴民间故事来描绘口语是一个值得尊重的超人的信息。