Literature and History: A Study of Nigerian Indigenous Historical Novels

Abstract

The assumption that history posits itself as a fact, while literature is taken to be an artistic form, only for entertainment (i.e. a difference between truth and falsehood, reality and illusion) has been a contention for long between the formalist and sociology of literature theorists. In Yorùbá society, literature and history are important in letting us understand the world around us; both explain the full meaning of life. It is against this background that this paper examins the relationship between literature and history and how Yorùbá novelists use their works as vehicle of representation of history. We adopt the theory of New Historicism to analyse T.A.A Ladele’s Igbì Ayé ń yí and Olu Owólabí’s Ọ̀tẹ̀ Nìbò. Some of the findings reveal that: both Yorùbá literature and history are closely related, they are both based on Yorùbá experience and Yorùbá existence either in the past or present; while Ladele interpreted the history of the dignity and royal glamour of the Yorùbá ọba in pre-colonial era as a form of domination which is often achieved through culturally-orchestrated consent rather than force, Owólabí represented the history of party politics in Yorùbá society as fraudulent, deceitful, full of bitterness and violence. The paper concludes that both novelists are subjective in their representation of Yorùbá history, but they successfully establish the fact that the novel is a banker of history.  However, such history is not a mere chronicle of facts and events, but rather a complex description of human reality and evolution of preconceived notions.