CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Purpose of Study
This essay examines the poetics of elegy in Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo and Hope Eghaghas Poems in order to identify and demonstrate the methods used by the poets to discuss death and the adaptive mechanism to conquer death’s sting.
1.2 Scope of Study
Akachi Adimora has three collections of poetry to her credit while Hope Eghaghà has six collections of poetry to his credit but this study is limited to one collection from each poet. Mixed legacies and mama dances into the night, because in this two collection, elegiac poems predominate.
1.3 Research Methodology
This study is primarily qualitative in nature as the poems are carefully read and analysed in line with their relatedness in style. Poems which have the same devices are categorised into two. Each category is critically examined to form one indivisible whole.
Relevant theoretical formulations are sourced to help interpret the poems with the view to providing the necessary foundation for the study. Finally related literature is reviewed to provide justification for the study.
1.4 Theoretical Background
This study incorporates formalism in order to examine the elegaic poetics employed in both Akachi Adimora and Hope Eghagha’s poetry.
Formalism is also known as New criticism (or practical criticism, close Reading or text application). According to Tim Gillespie, formalism involves “the careful analysis of literary text’s craft” (175). Elaborating further on this, Gillespie states that ” formalist criticism has for its main object the relation of form and meaning, that is, how a work of literature expresses it’s meaning through its structure, shape and technique” (177). Gillespie write forther:
To be a new critic, one must examine a piece of literature carefully,
Looking to unlock its structure, looking for unifying patterns that shape
the text and give its relevance to the whole and searching for uses
of language and ambiguous, ironies and tensions that contribute to the
whole effect. (178)
Formalist criticism focuses on a whole of lot of ideas and elements. First, it looks at the structural element of a text so as to interpret its adhesive qualities. It also seeks to understand how parts of the text from the whole. Third, it concentrates on how the speaker or writer uses language to convey meaning. It can further seek to resolve ambiguities or ironies that surround text. These are the essential qualities of formalism.
Hans Bertens explores formalism as the study of the literary text especially “the totality of its ‘devices’” and adds that ‘”literalness’ was the product of the inherent qualities of these devices”. By examining the devices of a text, the researcher will interpret how the text makes meaning. Each element and aspect of the devices help to expand the meaning and signification of the text.
Ann B. Dobie explains that formalism assumed its per-eminence among scholars and readers because “it provides them with a way to understand and enjoy a work for its own inherent values as a piece of literary art” (33). This point confirms on formalism the uniqueness of the approach. The explains why Dobie adds that formalism emphasis “close reading of the work itself” (33) and as such, “formalism puts the focus on the text as literature. It does not treat the text as an expression of social, religious or political ideas” (33). What this means is that formalism treats the text as an organic whole. It is the critical approaches that analyze, interpret or evaluate the inherent features of a text.
Aligning with the above, M.H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galts Harpham describe formalism as the study of the patterns and technical devices of literature to the exclusion of its subject matter and social values” (126). Formalist criticism as observed by its leading proponents, Boris Eichenbaum, Victor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson, considers the text as primary focus of study. Essentially then, since this study is interested in Akachi and Egnagha’s elegaic poems, the application of formalism is therefore appropriate.