The Nexus between Ideological and Thematic Preoccupations in the Deployment of Folkloric Expressions in Tunde Fatunde’s La calebasse cassée

Abstract

One of the major responsibilities of literary writers is to right the perceived inappropriateness in human societies for the purpose of socio-economic, cultural, and political development. Many creative writers of the post-independent period, especially in Africa, attempt to strike a balance between their ideological stance and the thematic preoccupations in their artistic works. It appears that less attention has been paid to the use of folkloric expressions in the discharge of the author’s ideology and preoccupations. This study, therefore, examines the deployment of folkloric traditions in Tunde Fatunde’s La calebasse cassée to illustrate the relationship between the writer’s point of view and the moral lessons he wished his readers could pick from his literary work. Tunde Fatunde’s La calebasse cassée is purposively chosen for this study because of the playwright’s inclination toward the social transformation agenda he has for human society. The French « explication de texte » is adopted as the methodology and Marxism serves as the theoretical framework for the study. Findings reveal that Tunde Fatunde’s La calebasse cassée exposes a binary opposition between the poor and the rich, and it presents religion as a false consciousness, a repressive ideology that brainwashes the poor which makes them stupid or at least modest to a fault and cheap to manipulate. The study concludes that Fatunde’s play, La calebasse cassée is a mockery of capitalism and/or neo-colonialism in African States, particularly in Nigeria.

Keywords: Ideology, thematic preoccupations, folkloric expressions, Marxism, Ogundokun