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The poet as a teacher: Form and discourse in the poetry of Chinua Achebe
Abstract
Not many people know Chinua Achebe as a poet. But this great mind's fascination
with language, knowledge and culture, has drawn him into this genre which he
uses as a platform to continue the teaching of his people about the dignity of their
past. Using a simple pliable form derived from his prose, Achebe executes a poetic
discourse that is at once pedagogic, in act and didactic in theme.Not many people
know Chinua Achebe as a poet. His fame rests mostly on his ability to spin
wonderful arid memorable stories, as could be seen in his great novels like Things
Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Thus he has become synonymous with the. African
Novel. But there is also Achebe the poet. In one of his essays: "The Novelist As
Teacher", Achebe says that-- part of his aim of writing is to teach his people or
readers that their past was not one long night of savagery, but a past that also had
its good and noble elements. This has been his guiding principle. Though he may
have been talking about his novels, our critical interest being on his poetry, we
were anxious to rind out if he is still using the same principle that governed his
fiction, to find direction for his, poetry. What we found out was positive: that in his
poetry he is also teaching his people, "to put away these years of self
denigration..." op cit This paper therefore describes Achebe's role as a teacher in
his poetry. To do this, we are going to explore his work from the point of view of
form being the level of grammatical structure and vocabulary and DISCOURSE
being the level of meaning, subdivided into layers - ideational, interpersonal and
textual.
Sophia: An African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8(1) 2005: 11-17
Keywords:
Keywords:
with language, knowledge and culture, has drawn him into this genre which he
uses as a platform to continue the teaching of his people about the dignity of their
past. Using a simple pliable form derived from his prose, Achebe executes a poetic
discourse that is at once pedagogic, in act and didactic in theme.Not many people
know Chinua Achebe as a poet. His fame rests mostly on his ability to spin
wonderful arid memorable stories, as could be seen in his great novels like Things
Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Thus he has become synonymous with the. African
Novel. But there is also Achebe the poet. In one of his essays: "The Novelist As
Teacher", Achebe says that-- part of his aim of writing is to teach his people or
readers that their past was not one long night of savagery, but a past that also had
its good and noble elements. This has been his guiding principle. Though he may
have been talking about his novels, our critical interest being on his poetry, we
were anxious to rind out if he is still using the same principle that governed his
fiction, to find direction for his, poetry. What we found out was positive: that in his
poetry he is also teaching his people, "to put away these years of self
denigration..." op cit This paper therefore describes Achebe's role as a teacher in
his poetry. To do this, we are going to explore his work from the point of view of
form being the level of grammatical structure and vocabulary and DISCOURSE
being the level of meaning, subdivided into layers - ideational, interpersonal and
textual.
Sophia: An African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8(1) 2005: 11-17
Keywords:
Keywords:
