Abstract:
Literature is an avenue for the artistic re-production of the life and cultural elements of
people in the form of prose, poetry, and drama. The culture of every group in particular
is established linguistically through narrative exchanges that determine the relevance
of the belief systems which hold the people together. To understand a culture,
particularly one in which orality is still a predominant form of recording history and
phenomena, one requires some acquaintance with its oral forms. As a group of people
survive in a particular society, they continually foster their own relevant customs
through different modes such as proverbs, songs, symbols, folktales and mythologies
among others. These literary works express ideas and the concerns of the people at the
time. One of such literary types which is well known in literary genre and often used to
decode the culture of a people is proverbs. These proverbs often connote historical
antecedents, customs, as well as the hopes, desires and fears of the people. This thesis
therefore analyzed the use of proverbs in West African Drama with Wole Soyinka’s
Kongi’s Harvest (2014), Sola Owonibi’s Peace by Pieces, (2016) and Ama Ata Aidoo’s
Anowa (1970) as case studies. The thesis purposively samples 120 proverbs out of
which eighty (80) are analysed using the reflectionist and performance art theories as
frameworks, delving into the influence and significance of the socio-cultural contexts
on the intra and extra-textual interpretation and understanding of the proverbs used. The
study establishes that the use of proverbs is very relevant to the study of drama as it
helps to sustain cultures and finally recommends that writers maintain the proverbs in
their original languages offering translations as footnotes.
Description:
A Thesis in the Department of English Language Education,
Faculty of Foreign Languages Education, submitted to the
School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Philosophy
(English Language Education)
in the University of Education, Winneba