Research In Yoruba Language And Literature Text

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O.ajibola's orin yoruba 1947 and owe yoruba 1947 , but not for his itojo tabi ofin marun or his booklet, co authored with b. One source that ogunseye evidently did not consult was the magnificent collection of yoruba texts assembled by w. Of some of the entries in the bibliography do not correspond to the originals in the bascom collection either because printers produced multiple variant reprints which is quite likely or because there are errors in the existing bibliographies from which ogunseye derived much of his data. The introductory section of the bibliography does a useful job of surveying the field and tabulating the bibliographic data by year and by subject matter. This is helpful but i am less convinced of the need to organize the bibliographic entries themselves under 18 main topic headings and a further 16 subheadings. In the case of major and distinctive bodies of writing such as dictionaries and grammars, or bible translations and liturgical texts, it makes sense to organize them in their own sections.

But for most of the other material, the effect of so many subdivisions is to make the bibliography hard to use, and to obscure the fact that much of what the early yoruba writers produced was multigeneric or fell simultaneously into several categories. K.ajisafe's famous aiye akamara is a series of edifying exhortations to schoolchildren, in verse form should it be in the section for poetry, school texts, or moral instruction ? the 21 entries for the prolific lagos newspaper proprietor e. Akintan which do not include his aiye l'oja orun n'ile or iwe ajisa loru are scattered among no less than ten categories, obscuring the essential unity of his project. The problem is compounded by the fact that even within the subsections, the entries are not always arranged in alphabetical order: thus, looking for the historian samuel ojo bada, i was surprised to find an entry for him between wood, jonathan buckland and oke, michael owolabi p. If, however, the reason for this is an intention to make the bibliography available for conversion into an electronic database where subdots and tone marks simply mess things up , then it is a move that is to be welcomed. You must be logged in through an institution that subscribes to this journal or book to access the full text.

Yoruba is one of nigeria’s most important languages, with over twenty five million native speakers. It is spoken predominantly in the western part of nigeria and along the coastal regions of the republic of benin and togo. It is a lingua franca among business communities in west africa, and has also survived as the most important african language in the americas, dating from the days of the slave trade. It is indispensable for research into african derived religions of the african diaspora in north america and europe. Yoruba is not only a language of communication and self expression praise songs and literature , but also a language of religion among the santería religious communities in cuba and among the candomble worshiping communities in brazil.

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Yoruba is a tonal language of the niger congo family and is spoken by about thirty million people, predominantly in western nigeria but with numerous speakers also in the neighboring republic of benin and togo. Yoruba cultural influences are strong in the caribbean and brazil, and poetic texts associated with the worship of the yoruba deities survive and are being reinforced by international travel between west africa and the new world. Written yoruba was first produced in ajami adapted arabic script but extensive written texts in yoruba began to be produced after the advent of christian missions in the mid 19th century and were written in the roman alphabet. One of the long standing debates was over the appropriate way to represent tones and open and closed vowels by adapting this alphabet.

Print culture, introduced by the missions in the 1840s, was quickly espoused by educated urban elites and a flourishing written literature became established from the 1880s onward. English and yoruba texts coexisted and interacted throughout the colonial period and up to the present day, and a number of leading writers functioned equally well in both. This article provides an overview of the history of literature in the yoruba language. It looks at oral and written texts, at yoruba literary criticism, and at yoruba dictionaries, grammars, language histories and beginners’ language courses. Babalọla 1985 provides a concise but comprehensive overview of a range of oral and written genres, with biographical notes on a number of key writers. Barber 2004 similarly covers both oral and written genres and includes modern performance genres from the 19th century to the present. Ogunbiyi 1988 is a collection offering very succinct but informative historical overviews.

Afọlayan 1982 and falọla and oyebade 2011 are collections of essays by various authors touching on different aspects of oral and written literary production. The edited work abimbọla 1975 is a compendium of essays on oral and some written traditions. Iṣọla 1992 makes the case for yoruba as a literary language close to the life world of its speakers, while adejunmọbi 2008 takes a long historical view of the vitality of yoruba as a literary language, from the 19th century to the present day. Ifẹ, nigeria: department of african languages and literatures, university of ifẹ, 1975. This volume of more than one thousand pages stemmed from a major conference at the university of ifẹ now ọbafẹmi awolọwọ university and features work by almost the whole of the then yoruba literary establishment. Despite the title, it includes essays on oral prose, written poetry, and miscellaneous cultural topics. This essay considers the possibility that yoruba language print culture, after a century of efflorescence, is on the decline because of the growth of the media and the intensification of globalization.

It concludes that yoruba language creativity is not waning but may be shifting into new mediatized forms such as video drama. This volume of conference proceedings contains classic essays by luminaries of yoruba studies including oyin ogunba on festival songs, ọ. ���latunji on the classification of oral poetic genres, ayọ bamgboṣe on lexical matching in yoruba poetry, and essays on aspects of yoruba grammar, dictionaries, lexical borrowing, dialect, and language in education. Succinct and comprehensive historical overview covering both oral and written literatures and including biographical notes on twenty four significant writers. This historical overview essay covers oral, written, media, and performance genres from the 19th century to the 21st century, contextualizes the development of new genres and traces the relations between oral, print, and mediatized forms. Attention is given to early print culture and to popular oral and media genres often overlooked in literary overviews. yoruba fiction, orature, and culture: oyekan owomoyela and african literature and the yoruba experience.

Festschrift for owomoyela, comprising twenty seven essays on aspects of oral literature and its interface with writing. Topics include praise poetry, proverbs, ancestral masquerade chants, oral genres in ritual, festivals, and as historical sources intertextuality and translation orature in media and legal and scientific dimensions of orature. Eloquent argument in favor of writing in one’s mother tongue, by a leading yoruba language novelist, playwright, and poet who is also a master of english language writing. This collection of short essays by a stellar cast of scholars focuses mainly on english language literature, but it includes overviews of the history of yoruba literature as a whole and individual pieces on the work of d. oxford bibliographies online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions and individuals.