Literary-stylistics of engagement in Femi Osofisan’s The Engagement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Existing linguistic and non-linguistic studies on Femi Osofisan’s The Engagement (TE) and his other plays have articulated the revolutionary dialectics that characterise his works. Besides the fact that TE has not been sufficiently explored, scholarly information on Osofisan’s construction of marriage proposal remains under-reported. Taking insights from aspects of literary stylistics (LS), this study examines the construction of marriage proposal in TE with a view to describing the implications of such construction for Yoruba culture. Engaging aspects of LS, ten purposively selected excerpts, relating to contextual construction of engagement are subjected to literary stylistic analysis. The study reveals that Osofisan adopts satire, humour and songs to trivialise marriage proposal as a relevant aspect of Yoruba cultural belief. Rather than describing the contextual description of marriage proposal within the Yoruba cultural perspective, Osofisan satirises marriage institution by creating conflict to orchestrate to characters’ follies, lampoon inherent complexities in human relations and depict the collapse of good parenting, especially in marriage. A literary stylistic reading of TE reveals the robust attachment of Osofisan to the Yoruba cultural values, and describes the smooth interaction between his art and social commitment.