CHAPTER ONE  

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

A member of African dramatists who writes African plays in English Language adapt their work from the oral tradition particularly Wole Soyinka and Hope Enghagha whose works serve as the focus of this research.

Wole Soyinka’s Death and the king’s Horseman (1975) are based on ritual, custom, tradition of particular people, which is said to be folklore. Hope Eghagha’s Death not a Redeemer (1998) is motivated by Soyinka’s Death and the king’s Horse man (1975). Few definitions by scholars on folklore will give a better understanding on what folklore entails.

Edward D. Ivese and Joe Scott (1978) saw folklore as:

No song, no performance, no act of creation can be properly understood apart from the culture or sub-culture in which it is bound and which it is a part, nor should any work of art be looked on as a thing in itself apart from the (continuum of creation consumption).

Benjamin A. Botkin (1938) gives a very clear definition of what folklore is about.

Folklore is a body of traditional belief, custom and expression handed down largely by word of mouth and circulating chiefly outside of commercial and academic means of communication and instruction.

These definitions express what folklore entails in different words.

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of that culture, sub culture or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folkloristic. The word ‘folklore’ was first used by the English antiquarian William Thomas in a letter published by the London journal in 1846. In usage, there is a continuum between folklore and mythology. Smith Thompson made a major attempt to index the motifs of both folklore and mythology providing an outline into which new motifs can be placed and scholars can track all older motifs.

Folklore can be divided into four areas of study, artifact (such as voodoo dollar), describable and transmissible entity (oral tradition), culture and behaviour (ritual). These areas do not stand alone; however, as often a particular item or element may fit into more than one of these areas.

ARTIF OF ACTS                                           

Object such as dolls, decorative items used in religious rituals, hand-built house and barn, and handmade clothing and other crafts are considered to be folk artifacts, grouped within the field as “Material” “culture”. Additionally, figures that depict characters from folklore, such as statues of the three wise monkeys may be considered to be folklore artifacts, depending on how they are used within a culture. The operative definition would depend on whether the artifacts are used and appreciated within the same community in which they are made, and whether they follow a community aesthetic (The three wise monkeys over the Tosho-gu shrine in Nikko, Japan).

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