engl 2020 themes in literature and culture: the grotesque amos tutuola (1920-1997). nigerian writer

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

Amos Tutuola (1920-1997). Nigerian writer


Amos Tutuola


Nigeria


The Mercator World Map


The Peters World Map


Three Contexts for Understanding

Tutuola:(1) Primitive/Folk Art


Grandma Moses {Anna Mary Robertson} (1860-1961). American primitive painter


Grandma Moses, Country Wedding


Grandma Moses, The Old Checkered House


Grandma Moses, Beautiful World


Howard Finster (1916-2001). American folk artist


Howard Finister, Elvis Presley


Howard Finster, Resting Souls Wait for Jesus


Howard Finster


Howard Finster

Amos Tutuola


Tutuola:(2) Campbell’s

Monomyth


Campbell’s Monomyth


Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

C. G. Jung (1875-1961)



Key Jungian Ideas:The Collective

UnconsciousThe ArchetypesIndividuationAnima/AnimusProjectionAuthenticityShadowDaimon

C. G. Jung

http://www.terrapsych.com/jungdefs.html



George Lucas



Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

C. G. Jung (1875-1961)



Key Jungian Ideas:The Collective

UnconsciousThe ArchetypesIndividuationAnima/AnimusProjectionAuthenticityShadowDaimon

C. G. Jung

http://www.terrapsych.com/jungdefs.html



George Lucas

Campbell’s MonomythENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque

Joseph Campbell (above), Richard

Slotkin (top right), Joss Whedon

Hero’s Journey : Summary of StepsMaricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI)

Maricopa Community CollegesENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture:

The Grotesque

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/

http://www.maricopa.edu/

Departure

The Call to AdventureThe call to adventure is the point in a person's life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not.


Maricopa Community Colleges




Departure

Refusal of the CallOften when the call is given, the future hero refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.






Departure

Supernatural AidOnce the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his or her guide and magical helper appears, or becomes known.






Departure

The Crossing of the First ThresholdThis is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.






Departure

The Belly of the WhaleThe belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero's known world and self. It is sometimes described as the person's lowest point, but it is actually the point when the person is between or transitioning between worlds and selves. The separation has been made, or is being made, or being fully recognized between the old world and old self and the potential for a new world/self. The experiences that will shape the new world and self will begin shortly, or may be beginning with this experience which is often symbolized by something dark, unknown and frightening. By entering this stage, the person shows their willingness to undergo a metamorphosis, to die to him or herself.


Maricopa Community Colleges ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The Grotesque



Inititation

The Road of TrialsThe road of trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.






Inititation

The Meeting with the GoddessThe meeting with the goddess represents the point in the adventure when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. It is also known as the "hieros gamos", or sacred marriage, the union of opposites, and may take place entirely within the person. In other words, the person begins to see him or herself in a non-dualistic way. This is a very important step in the process and is often represented by the person finding the other person that he or she loves most completely. Although Campbell symbolizes this step as a meeting with a goddess, unconditional love and /or self unification does not have to be represented by a woman.

Hero’s Journey : Sum

mary of Steps

Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruc

tion (MCLI)

Maricopa Com

munity Colleges





Initiation

Woman as the TemptressAt one level, this step is about those temptations that may lead the hero to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which as with the Meeting with the Goddess does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. For Campbell, however, this step is about the revulsion that the usually male hero may feel about his own fleshy/earthy nature, and the subsequent attachment or projection of that revulsion to women. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.






Return

Refusal of the ReturnSo why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?






Return

The Magic FlightSometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.






Return

Rescue from WithoutJust as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often times he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience. Or perhaps the person doesn't realize that it is time to return, that they can return, or that others need their boon.






Return

The Crossing of the Return ThresholdThe trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. This is usually extremely difficult.






Return

Master of the Two WorldsIn myth, this step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.






Return

Freedom to LiveMastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.








Tutuola(3) Magical Realism

Gabriel Garcia MárquezJorge Luis Borges

Guillermo Del ToroFrida Kahlo

Six Feet Under“It's Not Television, It's Magic Realism: The Mundane, the Grotesque, and the Fantastic in 6 Feet Under” by David Lavery

http://davidlavery.net/Collected_Works/Essays/It's_Not_TV.pdf




Michael Swanwick on Amos Tutuola

One of the great fantasists has fallen, and most of us in the field never even knew he existed. But Amos Tutuola, a tribesman of the Yoruba people in Nigeria and author of several books, most notably The Palm-Wine Drinkard, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and The Brave African Huntress, was one of the best writers of fantasy in world literature.

Tutuola's fictions were, in Dylan Thomas's words, "thronged, grisley and bewitching," filled with strange creatures, magic, horror, and humor. He wrote in an oddly-cadenced and strangely-phrased English. For added emphasis he wrote words LARGER, as if he were



telling a story aloud and had suddenly raised his voice to startle and alarm his listeners. For good reason: Tutuola was first-generation literate, a man who grew up in an oral culture and then managed to transplant some of its power onto the written page.

I do not know if Amos Tutuola was a literary genius or merely a conduit for the storytelling genius of his people. But to read The Palm-Wine Drinkard is to be transported back to one's first rapturous connection with literature, to that initial visceral encounter with Dickens or Nabokov or Austen that revealed what a marvelous and admirable thing fiction could be.



Stripped of all familiarity, lacking the critical terminology that helps to explain and domesticate great literature (for, make no mistake about it, the underlying principles and conventions of his vastly entertaining fictions are not those of literature derived from European models), the story becomes strange again, enigmatic, and beauteous. We lack the language to explicate its appeal. But critical words are not needed. His stories speak to the soul.

Amos Tutuola discovered his vocation shortly after World War II, upon his release from military service as a coppersmith with the British army. He chanced to buy a magazine containing an advertisement for a collection



of Yoruba tales. As he later recounted in an autobiographical essay, his immediate reaction was, "But Eh! By the way, when I was at school I was a good taleteller! Why, could I not write my own? Ooh, I am very good at this thing." The following day he started to write The Palm-Wine Drinkard.

It was extraordinary luck that Tutuola was published at all. As he explained:

Well, I wrote the script of Palm-Wine and kept it in the house. I didn't know where to send it to. Again, the following quarter I bought another magazine of the same type. Fortunately when I read it, I got to where it advertised "Manuscripts Wanted" overseas. Well then!



Immediately I sent my story to the advertiser. When my script got to them they wrote in about two weeks saying that they did not accept manuscripts which were not concerned with religion, Christian religion. But, they would not return my manuscript. They would find a publisher for me because the story was strange to them that they would not be happy if they returned it to me.

The book appeared quietly in 1952, and has been in print ever since. It has been translated into at least fifteen languages. Tutuola's work is now widely taught



throughout the world, and has had a strong influence not just in literature, but in dance, the visual arts, and music as well. Brian Eno and David Byrne's The Bush of Ghosts is probably the most famous work inspired by Tutuola's oeuvre, but there are many more.

Amos Tutuola was 77 when he died from hypertension and diabetes. I shall always regret that I never had the opportunity to meet the man. What excellent company he must have been! What a fine laugh he must have had.

© 1997 by Michael Swanwick; first appeared in Locus.


http://www.amazon.com/Life-Bush-Ghosts-Brian-Eno/dp/B000E5N634

http://www.amazon.com/Life-Bush-Ghosts-Brian-Eno/dp/B000E5N634

ENGL 2020 Themes in Literature and Culture: The GrotesqueChapter Titles

The Description of the Curious Creature “Do Not Follow Unknown Man’s Beauty” “Return the Parts of Body to the Owners, or Hired Parts of the Complete

Gentleman’s Body to Be Returned” “A Full-Bodied Gentleman Reduced to Head” “The Lady was not to be Blamed for Following the Skull as a Complete

Gentleman” “Three Good Creatures Took Over Our Trouble—They Were:--Drum, Song

and Dance” “On Our Way to the Unreturnable Heaven’s Town” “The Work of the Faithful-Mother in the White Tree” “We and the Wise King in the Wrong Town with the Prince Killer” “None of the Dead Too Young to Assault. Dead Babies on the Road-March

to the Deads’ Town” “Afraid of Touching Terrible Creatures in Bag” “Both Wife and Husband in the Hungry Creature’s Stomach” “An Egg Fed the Whole World” “Pay Me What You Owe Me and Vomit What You Ate”

engl 2020 themes in literature and culture: the grotesque amos tutuola (1920-1997). nigerian writer

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