Mythic displacement in Nigerian narratives: An introduction

Resumo

Five decades of resorting to humanistic critical procedureshave bequeathed to the Nigerian critical practice the legacy ofexamining and discovering in Nigerian and African narrativesthe historical and social concepts of the time and times theyare presumed to posit. These concepts include colonialism,corruption, war, political instability, and culture conflict. Theseprocedures are undertaken without due regard to seeing the wholeof the literary tradition as a stream out of which narratives emerge.This article, therefore, by way of introduction, seeks to retrieveNigerian narratives from “every author” and humanistic criticalapproach by placing them in a realm where a holistic method suchas Frye’s could be applied. Here, the traverses of the structure ofmythical imagery such as the mythos of crime and punishmentas embodied in these narratives and how this structure wasdisplaced/shrouded from Frye’s first mimetic mode to the last, viathe concept of mythic displacement, will be analysed.