A Practical Poetics for Orality: Nnabuenyi Ugonna's “Igidi” and Ezenwa-Ohaeto's Poetics and <em>The Voice of the Night Masquerade</em>

Abstract

The "igidi," a culturally relevant tool in literary criticism, is important in Nnabuenyi Ugonna's study of the dramatic aspects of the Igbo ancestral mask in Mmonwu: A Dramatic Tradition of the Igbo. The "igidi," as an equivalent to a prosodic foot, is Ugonna's solution to the problem of suitability in the analyses of Igbo mask chants. The "igidi" in this instance is such a culturally relevant tool. Similarly, Ezenwa-Ohaeto, in his text Contemporary Nigerian Poetry and the Poetics of Orality, advocates for a unique poetics for the criticism of contemporary oral texts. He postulates and applies this framework to critiques of poems featured in the text. In this article, a combination of "igidi," the poetics of orality, and context-based pragmatic analyses, which was developed into "universalist relativism," the author's construct is applied to select lines of The Voice of the Night Masquerade. This paper effectively negotiates the literary legacy of orality, its applications, and contemporaneity through a coherent poetics and argues for their application in wider scopes and texts.