| TABLE OF CONTENTS | ||
| Content Title Page | Page i | |
| Declaration | ii | |
| Abstract | iii | |
| Dedication | iv | |
| Acknowledgements | v | |
| Table of Contents | vi |
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CHAPTER ONE
1.1.0 Significance of the Study 23
- Introduction 28
- Scholarship on Two Thousand Seasons, Osiris Rising and KMT: in
the house of life 34
- Two Thousand Seasons as an Epic or a pan-African Epic 34
FOUNDATIONS OF ARMAH’S PAN-AFRICAN EPIC: A READING OF TWO THOUSAND SEASONS
- Introduction 55
- Formal Features of Two Thousand Seasons 55
- Technical Elements of Two Thousand Seasons 58
- Focalization in Two Thousand Seasons 58
- Character in Two Thousand Seasons 61
- Gender in Two Thousand Seasons 65
- Heroism in Two Thousand Seasons 70
- Setting in Two Thousand Seasons 71
- Diction in Two Thousand Seasons 73
- Style in Two Thousand Seasons 75
- Myth and the Epic Convention 80
- The Relevance of Myth in Two Thousand Seasons 84
Thematic Issues in Two Thousand Seasons 88
- History in Two Thousand Seasons 89
- Betrayal in Two Thousand Seasons 94
- Conflict and its Different Realizations in Two Thousand Seasons 96
- Religion in Two Thousand Seasons 98
- Resistance in Two Thousand Seasons 101
FURTHER DIMENSIONS OF ARMAH’S PAN-AFRICAN EPIC STORY: READING OSIRIS RISING AND KMT: IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE
- Introduction 104
- History in Osiris Rising 104
- Betrayal in Osiris Rising 106
- Education in Osiris Rising 107
- Conflict in Osiris Rising 108
- Resistance and Change in Osiris Rising 110
- KMT: in the house of life 112
- History in KMT: in the house of life 113
- Education or Knowledge Acquisition in KMT: in the house of life 114
- Conflict in KMT: in the house of life 115
Resistance in KMT: in the house of life 117
- Formal Features of Osiris Rising and KMT: in the house of life 118
- Focalization in Osiris Rising and KMT: in the house of life 118
- Character in Osiris Rising and KMT: in the house of life 120
- Setting in Osiris Rising and KMT: in the house of life 124
- Myth and Identity in Osiris Rising and KMT: in the house of life 126
- History in Osiris Rising 104
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
This thesis examines Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah’s three novels, Two Thousand Seasons (1973), Osiris Rising (1995) and KMT: in the house of life (2002) as pan-African epic novels. The study samples general features of the African epic as discussed in Okpewho’s The Epic in Africa: Towards a Poetics of the Oral Performance (1979). It looks at features such as the role of the bard, the oral mode of composition, the emphasis on music and performance, audience participation, and characterization among other things. It then studies some of the features of the primary texts. Technical features such as focalization, character and diction will be discussed. Major themes will also be examined; with a view to finding out if these features show significant differences that point to the emergence of a new kind of the African epic, the pan-African epic, why the author does so, and what such an innovation means for world literary discourse. Apart from this, the study also explores ways in which each of the novels fits into Armah’s pan- African project.
Background to the Study
Today, African epics such as Sundiata, Mwindo and Chaka are well-known among scholars and students of literature all over the world. However, when some critics refer to Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons, Osiris Rising or KMT: in the house of life as either an epic or a pan-African epic, it calls for critical study. In this regard, A. N. Mensah, E. Ngara and Erik Edi among others have all referred to at least one of the above-named novels either as an epic or a pan-African epic. This study, therefore, stems from the
critiques of such earlier scholars; it attempts to examine the novels, especially as “pan- African” epic novels as a way of finding out if there are any significant differences between them and the African epic. If successful, this study should enable us determine whether Armah’s “pan-African” epic marks the emergence of another form of the African epic or not.
Origins of pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is commonly associated with an ideology that proposes practical unity among African nations and black peoples the world over. It is an ideology intended to defeat imperialism and its effects such as endless wars, poverty and underdevelopment on the continent and to uphold black identity all over the world. The basis of pan-Africanism is, thus, political, and some of its earliest proponents were Henry Sylvester Williams, E.
W. Burghardt Dubois, and William Marcus Garvey. Others were to join later: Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mbonu Ojike, Hastings Banda, Kwame Nkrumah, Peter Mbiyu Koinage and George Padmore. But the concept of pan-Africanism, itself, is usually attributed to Henry Sylvester Williams:
Henry Sylvester Williams, a West Indian lawyer from Trinidad, was the first to use the term pan-Africanism and the first to organize a pan-African congress in 1900 in London where he brought together a number of Africans and men of African descent then living in Europe to discuss the question of colonialism and foreign domination of black peoples, racial prejudice and the treatment of Africans in South Africa, the future of Africa and the international standing of the only three black states existing in the world at the time, namely Haiti, Ethiopia and Liberia (Inside the OAU: Pan-Africanism in Practice 34).
Since its first political application, however, pan-Africanism seems to have acquired an extended usage we may here call literary pan-Africanism, the use of literary expression to
advance the ideology of pan-Africanism. Literary pan-Africanism, thus, has a dual role: both as literary expression and as political ideology. It is in this context Armah’s pan- African epic becomes relevant. In this sense, Armah does not stand alone, for other African writers and scholars have equally used literary expression as a vehicle to convey their pan-Africanist message, a message of solidarity, liberation and hope for the future of Africa. Wole Soyinka, Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and several others have all spoken to the issue of pan-Africanism, usually through poetry, drama or prose-fiction. In a sense, all these African writers seem to agree on the role of literature in the service of Africa’s future; they all use literature to convey the message of pan- Africanism, which is invariably a message steeped in politics and social justice.
But why would Armah use an indirect mode, literature, to express his pan-Africanist dream for Africa? The answer is not far-fetched; as a youth then studying in the United States of America, much like earlier pan-Africanists, Armah had felt the need to be part of the crusade for the freedom of Africa. He, therefore, attempted to join forces then fighting to bring about revolutionary change in Angola. He was not successful in that attempt. Consequently, he chose literary expression as a means to advance his political vision for his Africa. He puts it this way: “It is because in my initial push to find and work with like-minded bringers of social change–revolutionaries–I failed. Having failed to work for revolutionary change, I wanted to find a profession least likely to turn me into an auxiliary of the established world order” (The Eloquence of the Scribes 14-15).
Armah argues that a borderless Africa is desirable for the continent’s economic, political
and social advancement since other continents have similar configurations that have
contributed to making them influential in the world today. The following excerpt should
clarify Armah’s view on the geo-political configuration of Africa:
At a time when people on other continents are coming together to form economic and political unions in order to meet their human needs, African space is still chopped up into walled-off chunks, with complex barrages of administrative, military and political obstacles installed to keep the continent frozen behind its imposed divisions (Remembering the Dismembered Continent 13).
The main argument here is that if it is good for other continents to form unions for the strategic purpose of dealing more effectively with the daily challenges of their populations, then it ought to be equally good for Africa. Armah, however, insists that the same European and American forces that spearheaded the division of Africa are still at work to keep it so. He maintains that the current situation where African nations are made to see one another as “independent”, with defined geographical demarcations, is a well- calculated scheme by more powerful external influences such as Europe and the United States of America to weaken Africa and make the continent easy to dominate and control. Examined within the context of independent African nations, the relevance of Armah’s argument becomes more compelling. Once African nations perceive one another as independent, they assume an increasingly combative and competitive stance against one another, a situation that could trigger civil unrest bordering on ‘territorial’ matters, and this is unhealthy for the overall development of the continent. That Ghana is currently negotiating maritime border issues with neighbouring Ivory Coast brings home to us the harsh realities of Armah’s argument. To remain ‘independent’ African nations, Armah would argue, is to remain perpetually powerless economically and politically, and therefore, vulnerable to external manipulation, and that, he maintains, is part of the
reasons for the unwarranted interest Europe and the United States of America seem to show in the affairs of African nations. Armah is quite unequivocal on this point:
If the present configuration of African space is so demonstrably harmful to the continent’s population, and yet has powerful agencies actively maintaining it and extending it into the future, it is logical to wonder why. What purpose was the system designed to serve? Why, in spite of its lethal toxicity, didn’t Africans of the post–independence generation abandon it, to replace it with a humane, intelligent, African system? (Remembering the Dismembered Continent 13).
Clearly, Armah is not pleased with the current “configuration” of Africa where each country is administered as an independent nation-state, and he intends to help find a solution to this state of affairs. His pan-African epic story should, therefore, be seen as an artistic response to what he sees as the political, social and economic challenges of his Africa. It is in this context we understand more clearly what Armah implies when he writes:
When I looked into my psyche, what I saw was a consciousness desiring first of all to bond with all Africans, to live out that desirable bond, thinking of the most creative ways in which Africans might be brought together, and bending my work deliberately, consciously, toward that aim (The Eloquence of the Scribes 120-121).
The above quotation further lends substance to our claim earlier that behind Armah’s literary pan-Africanism is a political vision, the latter providing the impetus for the former. What we have here, then, is a two-fold pan-Africanism–literary and political. Like other pan-Africanist writers, Armah is using literary expression to achieve what his forebears had long dreamt of–African unity or pan-Africanism–without which, according to him, the continent will remain forever subjugated, oppressed and plundered by external forces, led mainly by Europe and America.
This invitation to African nations to rally together in order to assert their total liberation from imperial influence, Armah concedes, will not be an easy task. Through some of his characters in the novels, such as Isanusi in Two Thousand Seasons, Asar in Osiris Rising, and Biko Lema and Djieli Hor, in KMT: in the house of life, Armah shows that freeing Africa from the shackles of imperialism is going to be difficult to execute; it will require total commitment; it will leave some maimed; and it will result in the death of some; but in the end, it will be worthwhile, and Africa will be the better for it. “I know I will go through mountains of pain to get a taste of victory,” says Denden, a character in KMT: in the house of life (336). It is no wonder that lead characters like Isanusi, Asar, and Djieli Hor all perish in the struggle to “re-member the dismembered continent.” What is significant, however, is that the struggle continues despite the exit of such lead characters.
The Epic as an Established Literary Form
Epics existed long before Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey and before Aristotle’s treatise on poetry in general, and on tragedy and the epic in his Poetics. Gilgamesh, for instance, which is often counted among the masterpieces of world literature, predates The Iliad and The Bible, and is considered one of the world’s great epics. Among literary scholars today, however, there is the tendency to draw on Aristotle’s Poetics in which he clarifies some of the features of the genre. Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey have also become seminal texts in literary study as far as discussions of the epic are concerned. In chapter XXIV of his Poetics, Aristotle draws attention to four elements of the epic, namely plot, character, diction and thought (133 – 135). Apart from these, he also
mentions as an important feature the historicity of the epic message, for it is that which enhances the epic message and accords it a national character. To Aristotle, then, the five elements mentioned above are crucial in the epic. Other scholars have since explored the epic in an attempt to further understand the genre.
Sackey (2010) refers to Robert J. Clements’ checklist of elements of epic poetry which presents thirteen elements taken from Aristotle and eighteen others from modern scholarship, making up a total of thirty-one. However, Sackey thinks that all thirty-one epic elements suggested by Clements could be reduced to the five Aristotelian elements earlier mentioned. Sackey further suggests that the five Aristotelian epic elements constitute two main aspects of the epic, and these, he explains, are the structure—made up of plot, character, diction and thought, and the moral or national value, which refers to the historicity of the epic message. According to Sackey: “. . . even if the story of the epic is more fable than history, the final historical outcome or value should be inevitable” (Dimensions of Comparative Literature 26). Put differently, the epic story, no matter how fictional it appears, should contain a historical antecedent that all the people can identify with.
It is instructive to mention at this point that for some time, the existence in Africa of the literary form called the epic remained an issue of contention. Whereas some critics thought the genre did not exist in Africa, others maintained that it did. This debate was set off by Ruth Finnegan because of the doubts she expressed in her Oral Literature in Africa (1970) about the existence of the epic in Africa. She argues as follows:
Epic is often assumed to be the typical poetic form of non-literate peoples or at least of non-literate peoples at a certain stage. Surprisingly, however, this does not seem to be borne out by the
African evidence. At least in the more obvious sense of a “‘relatively long narrative poem,’” epic hardly seems to occur in sub-Saharan Africa apart from forms like the (written) Swahili utenzi which are directly attributable to Arabic literary influence (Finnegan 108).
It is obvious, from the above quotation, that as far as Finnegan was concerned, there was no evidence that the epic existed in Africa. In her concluding remarks on the issue, she adds, “But in general terms and apart from Islamic influences, epic seems to be of remarkably little significance in African oral literature and the a priori assumption that epic is the natural form for many non-literate peoples turns out here to have little support” (110).
However, the above view no longer holds since several publications, both scholarly and artistic, on the African epic have emerged. Okpewho’s The Epic in Africa: Towards a Poetics of the Oral Performance (1979) is crucial here, and equally important are two significant anthologies published in 1997. Drawn from the oral epics of Sub–Saharan Africa, the two anthologies, Vibrant Voices from a Vast Continent (published in English), and Les Epopee D’afrique (published in French) have served to enrich world literary studies, particularly the corpus of African epic literature. These publications have helped to give us a more comprehensive idea about the African epic.
The African Epic in Perspective
Although several African epic texts exist today, a standard definition of what the African epic is or should be is not easy to come by. That notwithstanding, Isidore Okpewho’s The Epic in Africa: Towards a Poetics of the Oral Performance (1979) is relevant as it brings out certain features that give us a fair idea about the African epic. Okpewho mentions
culture and geography, orality, the role of the bard, musical accompaniment, performance, character, among other things as features of the African epic. Our conceptualization of the African epic in this thesis, therefore, will be based on the above- mentioned features.
On culture and geography, Okpewho points out that there is no unified, homogenous cultural and geographical background for the African epic although he has sought to treat the genre as though it were so. In other words, there are as many cultural and geographical disparities as there are different African epics. “Is Africa not too diverse in geography, race, and language patterns to be subjected to such ready paradigms, even with the best of intentions?” he asks (29). Mwindo and Chaka are good examples here, for although they are both African epics, they are culturally and geographically different. Whereas Mwindo belongs to the Banyanga, a Bantu-speaking group of the Congo, Chaka is of the Mazulu, one of the numerous ethnic groups of the Bakone of South Africa.
Another feature of the African epic is its oral form. By this we mean that the manner of composition of the African epic is oral rather than literate. Okpewho defines an oral epic as one that is:
“fundamentally a tale about the fantastic deeds of a man or men endowed with something more than human might and operating in something larger than the normal human context and it is of significance in portraying some stage of the cultural or political development of a people. It is usually narrated or performed to the background of music by an unlettered singer working alone or with some assistance from a group of accompanists” (34).
Because of its oral mode of composition, any one African epic tends to have more than one text since the conditions prevailing at one performance would slightly differ from
those of others. This feature has often given rise to different versions of the same epic. Sundiata, also rendered Sunjata, for example, is known to have different versions. Okpewho refers to at least two different versions of this epic, each with a different griot. The griot or bard in Niane’s version is Djeli Mamoudou Kouyate, but “in yet another version, the griot” is “Banna Kanute” (46).
