A meta-critical study of Akachi Ezeigbos perspectives on childrens literature in Nigeria: Narratology as scientific instrument, morality and didactics in analysis

Abstract

This paper conceptualizes the motif of morality as didactics in delineating the study of children’s literature in Nigeria. The work catapults the various tenets which govern the essence of literature and its social engineering devices. Children fictions and imaginary works have been employed by writers to propel the need to ‘do good’ and ‘shun bad devices’. From the time of Plato and Aristotle in the Greek city state, literatures have been used to illuminate treasure, lesson and good intentions in order to satisfy the yearnings of poetic justice. Even among the little children, mid-night stories, memoirs and short stories have been espoused to denote the concept of good over the bad. In Nigeria to be specific, the government has observed the intruding intricacies in man’s development by mandatorily making some selected children’s literatures a must read in order to rib corruption from the nib. The children fictions were concretized to underscore the motifs of morality and didactics in Nigerian children epoch. The paper surveys Akachi Ezeigbo’s ’50 Years of Children’s Literature in Nigeria: Prospects and Problems’ and makes a meta-critical analysis of the trends and generations of writers she portrays. The paper relies on narratology as theoretical framework using the meta-analysis as a paradigm. Tzvetan Todorov is the first scholar to use the term narratology in his book which is entitled Grammaire Du Decameron. Ever since then this term has gained frequency and prominence in the literary and critical meta-texts. Although narratology is a structural discipline, its applicability lends axiomatic credence to the analysis of other areas such as fabula, sjuzhet, technical, discourse, and narrative focalisation. The paper argues that the science of fiction is an instrument of portrayal of re-engineering of cultural ethos and the development of the mindset of the children and their exposure to literatures that teach morality. The paper calls for a concerted effort to develop the children through the imaginative science of literature in order to respond positively to the yearnings of globalization. Key words: Literature, morality, didactics, Children’s Literature, narratology, Akachi Ezeigbo, Nigeria.