English-Scholarly Publications

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    Modern (Wo)Man and the Narrative Grammar of Tony Nwaka’s Shadows and Nothings
    (A publication of Department of English, University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, Nigeria, 2021-12) Azumurana, S.O.; Oluwadare, S.I.
    This paper has been informed fundamentally by the criticisms against Structuralism as a tool of critical exegesis. Despite such criticisms, the paper argues for its relevance by using it in the reading of Tony Nwaka’s novel, Shadows and Nothings (2019). The paper first clears some erroneous misconception about the theory of Structuralism before deploying its two basic concepts – the concept of signification and of binary opposition - for its analysis. Drawing on the concept of signification (the arbitrary relations between the signifier and the signified), it makes use of Tzvetan Todorov’s schema of narrative grammar that stresses that every narrative follows the seek-and-find formula. Yet, by deploying the three properties of signification – wholeness, transformation, and selfregulation – the paper demonstrates that Todorov’s traditional “seek-and-find” formula undergoes some transformation in Nwaka’s novel – so that, instead of the “seek-andfind” pattern, there is on one hand the “seek-find-and-lose again” and on the other, the “seek-find-lose-and-find-again” structure. However, the narrative is still self-regulated because, despite its transformation, it again reinforces the redemptive underpinning that characterizes classical fictions – that of the hero(ines) always questing for one thing or another that they feel in some way would transform them. Going further, by employing the concept of binary opposition, the paper contends that there are two pairs of oppositional characters in Nwaka’s Shadows and Nothings – those who “seek-find-andlose” and those who “seek-find-lose-and-find” again. The paper then concludes that by broadening or overturning the scope of the traditional “seek-and-find” structure, Nwaka successfully lines himself up in the queue of modernist writers who see the life of modern (wo)man as being more complicated, and who would, therefore, completely avoid a dogmatic adherence to the sentimentality of traditional/classical narratives.
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    Open Access
    Casino Journalism and The End of History
    (University of Lagos Press and Bookshop Limited, 2024) Ibraheem, I.A.
    Full texts attached
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    Open Access
    Nigerian Drama and National Unity: Olu Obafemi's Dramaturgy and the New Historical Criticism
    (National Theatre Nigeria in Conjunction with Alpha Crownes Publishing Limited, 2021) Oni, D.; Azumurana, S.O.
    Full texts attached
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    Open Access
    The Psychic Reality of Mother-Daughter Relationship
    (Journal of Intercultural Disciplines, 2022) Azumurana, S.O.
    Full texts attached
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    Open Access
    Melancholia and the search for the lost object in Farah’s Maps
    (TYDSKRIF VIR LETTERKUNDE, 2017) Azumurana, S.O.; Eruvbetine, A.E.
    Maps, given its intriguing narrative thrusts and multi-axial thematic concerns, is arguably the most studied or analysed of Nur- rudin Farah’s nine prose fictions. The novel’s title as well as its synopsis has naturally dictated the focus of critics on the Western Somalia Liberation Front’s war efforts geared towards liberating the Ogaden from Ethiopian suzerainty and restoring it to Somalia. The nationalist fervour, the war it precipitates and its fallouts of a strife-ridden milieu have such a pervading presence in the novel that the personal experiences of the novel’s two major characters, Askar and Misra, are quite often discussed as basic allegories of ethnic and nationalistic rivalries. This paper focuses on the personal experiences of Farah’s two major characters. It contends that the private story of Askar and Misra is so compelling and central to the many issues broached in the novel that it deserves significant critical attention. Drawing upon Sigmund Freud’s and Melanie Klein’s concepts of melancholia, the paper explores how central the characters’ haunting sense of melancholia is to the happenings in Farah’s Maps.