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The IUP Journal of English Studies :
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Abstract |
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Esiaba Irobi recycles the mythic, ideological, and ritual properties of his Ngwa-Igbo society to enact new legends, myths, and heroic plots. In recent times, young Nigerian artists have been contributing to the creative consciousness of the youth in Nigeria through a style of writing fueled by seething anger, a call to social action that prescribes violent rebellion. Irobi is convinced that government leadership is evil, morally irresponsible, and deserving resistance by conscientious citizens. His plays generally display an overt desire to reallocate power to marginalized youth and embellish the repressive acts of the antagonistic forces against them to reflect the true situation of the Nigerian society. Through the act of rebellion or revolution, which is a major theme in Irobi’s oeuvre, these young Nigerian militants seek to redeem their self-esteem which has been abused by the establishment. A close reading of Irobi’s plays reveals a tendency to sanitize violence as an instrument for conflict resolution and social advancement. Irobi pushes the reader to analyze his young heroes’ actions beyond the physical and consider them as structural responses to institutionalized aggression. |
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Description |
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The idea of the hero as the savior of his community has been the subject of literature from classical times to postmodernity. National legends like Hercules, Achilles, Beowulf, Caesar, etc. have been lionized in several epics for championing their communities’ collective interests and sometimes dying for that same conviction. The original hero in antique literature was probably modeled on the king who died for his people or the warrior who defeated his tribe’s enemies (Bloomfield 1975, 30). This paper examines the way the contemporary Nigerian playwright Esiaba Irobi has strategized certain ideals that make the ethical interpretation of moral codes fluid. Against the immediate postindependence trend of African writers creating ideological heroes from the stock of nationalist leaders that fought colonialism, a new breed of playwrights has sculpted new heroes from the youth bracket by stylizing violent militancy as a political stratagem. Heroic characterization by Nigerian playwrights like Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan, J P Clark, Ola Rotimi, etc. has highlighted the ethnic color of the writer and reinforced cultural stereotypes about his Nigerian region. Such literary works can in this regard perpetuate ethnic heritage, deepen intellectual content, and reveal the related cultural features in a nation’s ethnic panoply.
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