Semantic absurdities and social vision for Africa in Jared Angira's poetry

Abstract

This is a study of the semantic absurdities in Jared Angira's poetry and the social vision for Africa as espoused in his poetry. The study explores Tides of Time: Selected Poems (1996) and Lament of the Silent & Other Poems (2004). It identifies and analyzes the use of paradox, oxymoron, irony, contrast and juxtaposition which are collectively referred to as semantic absurdities. This is the craft within the poetry that helps unveil the message Angira has about the poor and other downtrodden groups of people in society, and unearth his social vision. Although Angira's poetry has been anthologized by a number of writers from Africa, it is important to note that most of this poetry goes uncritiqued. As far as we have established, no one has studied our proposed topic in the few studies conducted on the poetry of Jared Angira. This has provided us with a wide gap on which we have based our study. We seek to establish what Angira is saying about the poor masses that populate our society, the underlying factors for such a grim situation and the probable way out as suggested by the artist. The study has employed Practical Stylistics and Marxist Literary Critical approaches whereby the poems that are rich in the selected semantically absurd words and/or expressions have been analyzed in a bid to decode the message encoded therein, and also the espoused social vision. The work is to be structurally divided as follows: The first section will be made up of conceptual Chapter 1 that maps out the way forward for the study. Chapter 2 deals with the semantic absurdities in Tides of Time: Selected Poems, the message for the poor and downtrodden in the society and social vision borne in the poetry. Chapter 3 focuses on the semantic absurdities in Lament of the Silent & Other Poems, the message for the poor and downtrodden in the society and social vision borne in the poetry. Chapter 4 which is the conclusion highlights the point of convergence of the two anthologies and discusses the relation of the findings to our objectives. It recommends the aspects that could be studied by lovers of Angira's poetry. The study has tackled some of the aspects of both form and content in Angira's poetry.