Abstract:
This study is a stylistic investigation of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Gikuyu fiction. Its purpose
is to interrogate the use of orature and the aesthetic value it has given to his Gikuyu
creative writings. The use of vernacular languages in literary creation and the inherent
challenges opened an avenue that had not been explored in African literature. Earlier
works that had laid the basis of African literature, and especially in Ngugi’s case, were
short stories as opposed to the novelistic discourse. These languages, which had not been
used in creating long literary discourses, need to be examined as to how they were
moulded for literary creation. The study has attempted to show that orature does not only
have aesthetic appeal but it is also a growing body of art that is able to adapt to changes
in the society through space and time. The study has evaluated how Ngugi has
appropriated Gikuyu language and oral tradition to achieve aesthetic effect. It has also
analyzed Ngugi’s adaptation of motifs and images of oral tradition in a changing,
contemporary society and its use in projecting social and ideological vision. Based on
eclectic but carefully selected theoretical framework and methodological orientation, the
study has taken advantage of postcolonial, stylistics and semiotic theory (including some
postulations from semiotic theoreticians like Foucault, Bakhtin and Althusser). From
semiotic theory the study has taken cognizance of the importance of signs in all cultures,
this has guided the study in interrogating the growth and adaptability of oral forms
(which are treated as individual signs) through time. The enquiry has also taken
advantage of Saussure’s concept of langue and parole, and has approached oral tradition
as a system from which African creative writers’ use in their construction of a work of
art. Postcolonial theory has been crucial to the study, especially in the light of Ngugi’s
change of language, and more because language is an important component in the
questions of identity, power and representation. The study’s conclusion is that Ngugi
employs orature as a textual strategy in consciously subverting and deconstructing
colonial and neo-colonial practices. It has also been used as a process of reclaiming and
recovering the previously occluded indigenous histories and tradition. The recuperated
oral forms have in turn been employed as models or templates in representing
contemporary postcolonial reality. In the studied works therefore, orature emerges as a
vii weapon of resistance against all forms of social injustices, its constituents which include
oral narratives, proverbs, songs and riddles are some of the locales from which differing
ideologies are discussed, contested and subverted.
