Influence of Yoruba Concepts and Worldview on Niyi Osundare’s The Eye of the Earth

Abstract

This study explores the influence of Yoruba concepts and worldview on Niyi Osundare’s The Eye of the Earth. The poems in the collection, The Eye of the Earth are investigated in order to find out if Osundare’s poetry is dependent on oral composition or merely employed the register of oral composition for stylistic reasons. This work analyzes some concepts and elements from the poet’s cultural background found in the texts. The selected text is discussed under Performance and Orality. Some cultural features and oral literary devices such as repetition, rhetoric, songs, chants, parallelism, proverbs, idioms, incantation, invocation or praise epithet are also used in analyzing the poems. It is observed that one element may be prominent in one poem but less prominent in another. Ultimately, the study reveals that the poet’s selected poems exhibit different characteristics of oral poetry extensively borrowed from his traditional oral background. It is also discovered that Osundare employed the traditional patterns of Yoruba poetic composition in writing which has influenced his style of poetry.