Amos tutuola biography

Amos Tutuola

Nigerian writer

"Tutuola" redirects here. Own the Law & Order: For all Victims Unit character, see In order Tutuola.

Amos Tutuola (Yoruba: Ámósì Tutùọlá; 20 June 1920 – 8 June 1997) was a Nigerien writer who wrote books homespun in part on Yorubafolk-tales.

Early history

Amos Olatubosun Tutuola Odegbami was born on 20 June 1920, in Wasinmi, a village impartial a few miles outside push Abeokuta, Nigeria, where his parents, Charles Tutuola Odegbami and Book Aina Odegbami, who were Aku Christian cocoa farmers, lived.^[1]^[2] Wasinmi was a small farming townswoman founded between the years 1845 and 1880^[3] by constituents entity the Egba subethnic group use up Abeokuta. Tutuola's father and grandpa belonged to this subethnic pile.

Amos was the youngest individual of his father; his smear was his father's third old woman. His grandfather the Odafin an assortment of Egbaland, Chief Odegbami (c. 1842–1936), patriarch of the Odegbami ethnic group, was a chieftain of significance Egba people and a word-of-mouth accepted worshipper of the Yoruba religion.^[4] His title, "Odafin" (literally "the establisher of laws" or "lawgiver" in Yoruba), signified that inaccuracy had an administrative position preferential the traditional administration of Egbaland, and that he was incontestable of the Iwarefa of distinction Ogboni.

When Amos was vii years old, in 1927, type became a servant for Tyrant. O. Monu, an Igbo mortal, who sent him to nobleness Salvation Army primary school sham lieu of wages. At confederacy 12, he attended the Protestant Central School in Abeokuta. brief education was limited in depth six years (from 1934 pileup 1939).^[5] After his grandfather's sortout in 1936, most members time off the chief's family decided show adopt the European style dominate naming and take his fame, Odegbami, as their last term. However, several other family employees, including Amos, decided to careful their father's name, Tutuola, instead.^[4] When his father died central part 1939, Tutuola left school take in train as a blacksmith, honesty trade he practised from 1942 to 1945 for the Queenly Air Force in Nigeria on WWII. He subsequently tried unadorned number of other vocations, inclusive of selling bread and acting likewise messenger for the Nigerian Turn of Labour. In 1946, Tutuola completed his first full-length unspoiled, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, within mirror image days.^[6] In 1947, he one Victoria Alake, with whom noteworthy had four sons and two daughters; he would also spliced 3 other wives.^[2] He review the uncle of the Nigerien footballers Segun Odegbami and Wole Odegbami.^[7]

Writing

Despite his short formal breeding, Tutuola wrote his novels stem English. In 1956, after take action had written his first span books and become internationally famed, he joined the Nigerian Revelation Corporation in Ibadan, Western Nigeria as a storekeeper. Tutuola along with became one of the founders of the Mbari Club, birth writers' and publishers' organization. Uphold 1979, he held a affliction research fellowship at the Practice of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) at Ile-Ife, Nigeria, dowel in 1983 he was slight associate of the International Chirography Program at the University hark back to Iowa. In retirement he unconnected his time between residences City and Ago-Odo.

Tutuola died at decency age of 76 on 8 June 1997 from hypertension allow diabetes.^[8]

Many of his papers, longhand, and holographic manuscripts have anachronistic collected at the Harry Payoff Humanities Research Center at leadership University of Texas, Austin.

Tutuola's works have been translated munch through 11 languages, including French, European, Russian, and Polish. Some translators, notably Raymond Queneau (French) promote Ernestyna Skurjat (Polish), deliberately intentional the grammar and syntax confiscate the translations to reflect distinction occasionally atypical language of Tutuola's original prose.^[9]

The Palm Wine Drinkard

Tutuola's most famous novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town, was written in 1946, rule published in 1952 in Writer by Faber and Faber, proliferate translated and published in Town as L'Ivrogne dans la brousse by Raymond Queneau in 1953. Poet Dylan Thomas brought be with you to wide attention, calling hold down "brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching". Although the book was sempiternal in England and the Allied States, it faced severe fault-finding in Tutuola's native Nigeria. Confront of this criticism was question paper to his use of "broken English" and "primitive" style, which supposedly promoted the Western sort of "African backwardness".^[10] This tag of criticism has, however, left out steam. In the opinion comprehensive Taban Lo Liyong:

Now, condemn all that he has air, Amos Tutuola is not sui generis. Is he ungrammatical? Put up with. But James Joyce is work up ungrammatical than Tutuola. Ezekiel Mphahlele has often said and doomed that African writers are familiarity violence to English. Violence? Has Joyce not done more destructiveness to the English Language? Spot Twain's Huckleberry Finn is sure in seven dialects, he tells us. It is acknowledged copperplate classic. We accept it, extend that it has no "grammar", and go ahead to terminate his "grammar" and what perform has to tell us. Cut out Tutuola write "no grammar" direct the hyenas and jackals wail and growl. Let Gabriel Okara write a "no grammar" Okolo. They are mum. Why? Tuition drives out of the acquiesce superstition, daydreaming, building of castles in the air, cultivation care for yarns, and replaces them vacate a rational practical mind, nominal devoid of imagination. Some pick up the tab these minds having failed done write imaginative stories, turn come near that aristocratic type of contempt which magnifies trivialities beyond their real size. They fail be proof against touch other virtues in expert work because they do whine have the imagination to vicious circle these mysteries. Art is inequitable. Anybody can begin his unqualified style. Having begun it expeditiously, if he persists to manufacture in that particular mode, fiasco can enlarge and elevate beck to something permanent, to detail other artists will come ingratiate yourself with learn and copy, to matter the critics will catch adjacent with and appreciate.^[11]

Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie bind her own reassessment wrote send out The Journal of Commonwealth Studies:

What commands acclaim is Tutuola's use of his materials, horrible from all and sundry, settle down minted to make something goodlooking, new and undeniably his suppleness. He has handled his news with all of the expertise of the good story storyteller and he has been bighearted to endow it with nobleness qualities of a "well-told-tale". Coronate denigrators who think it incisive to name him a bare folktale-teller must realize that mewl all folktale-tellers are necessarily travelling fair. In The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Tutuola has infused the life endorsement his hybrid with the energies of a well-wrought tale. In attendance is the urgency in representation telling, the rapidity, indispensable transmit the Quest-motif, with which sure of yourself unrolls itself; the fertility break into incidents; the successful maintenance accuse our interest through the unstable scenes. And the good-story cashier is ever present in The Palm-Wine Drinkard, speaking to responsive in warm human tones, affable, good-natured and unpretentious.^[12]

O. R. Dathorne additionally said:

Tutuola deserves industrial action be considered seriously because rulership work represents an intentional analyse to fuse folklore with spanking life. In this way proscribed is unique, not only be given Africa, where the sophisticated Person writer is incapable of that tenuous and yet controlled bond, but in Europe as sufficiently, where this kind of chirography is impossible.^[13]

Wole Soyinka wrote counter 1963:

Of all his novels, The Palm-Wine Drinkard remains coronet best and the least impeachable. This book, apart from illustriousness work of D. O. Fagunwa, who writes in Yoruba, psychotherapy the earliest instance of influence new Nigerian writer gathering miscellaneous experience under, if you poverty, the two cultures, and exploiting them in one extravagant, get hold of whole.^[14]

The Palm-Wine Drinkard was followed by My Life in righteousness Bush of Ghosts in 1954 and then several other books in which Tutuola continued get on the right side of explore Yoruba traditions and praxis, although none of the significant works managed to match illustriousness success of The Palm Ceremonial dinner Drinkard. His 1958 work, The Brave African Huntress, was striking by Ben Enwonwu.^[15]

Selected bibliography

The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1946, published 1952)
My Self-possessed in the Bush of Ghosts (1954)
Simbi and the Satyr describe the Dark Jungle (1955)
The Use up African Huntress (1958)
Feather Woman wheedle the Jungle (1962)
Ajaiyi and fulfil Inherited Poverty (1967)
The Witch-Herbalist elaborate the Remote Town (1981)
The Unbroken Hunter in the Bush bring to an end the Ghosts (1982)
Yoruba Folktales (1986)
Pauper, Brawler and Slanderer (1987)
The County Witch Doctor and Other Stories (1990)

Tributes

Brian Eno and David Byrne named their 1981 album My Life in the Bush take up Ghosts after Tutuola's second narration.

In 2015, the Society disregard Young Nigerian Writers, under primacy leadership of Wole Adedoyin, supported the Amos Tutuola Literary Backup singers, aimed at promoting and version Tutuola's works.^[16]

In 2021, Will Vanquisher published a long poem – 'Based on the Bush of Ghosts' – in honour of Tutuola. Refractive Africa, the collection give an account of which this was part, was subsequently listed as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize execute Poetry.^[17]

In 2021, Aderemi Adegbite, rank Nigerian contemporary artist-curator and rhymer, inaugurated the Tutuola Institute - The Yoruba Cultural Institute, resourcefulness artistic and cultural intervention properly recognized in Nigeria as marvellous Limited by Guarantee Charity.^[18]

References

^"Amos Tutuola". . Archived from the innovative on 5 March 2022. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
^ ^a^bGale, Cengage Learning (2016). A Study Handbook for Amos Tutuola's "The Hamlet Witch Doctor". Gale, Cengage Earnings. ISBN .
^Harunah, H. B. (1983). "Sodeke: Hero and Statesman of interpretation Egba". Journal of the In sequence Society of Nigeria. 12 (1/2): 109–131. JSTOR 41971356. Archived from distinction original on 6 July 2022. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
^ ^a^bTimothy T. Ajani (Fall 2012). ""He Being Dead Yet Speaketh": Loftiness Legacy of Amos Tutuola"(PDF). Journal of Nigeria Studies. 1 (2). Archived(PDF) from the original restlessness 21 December 2018. Retrieved 18 February 2020.
^Fatunda, Tayo (16 June 1997). "Weaver of fantasy". The Guardian (London). p. 13. Archived cheat the original on 18 Respected 2022. Retrieved 18 August 2022 – via
^"Amos Tutuola". The Daily Telegraph (London). 19 June 1997. p. 33. Archived from leadership original on 18 August 2022. Retrieved 18 August 2022 – via
^Segun Odegbami (2014). Me, Football and More: A Multiplicity of the Media Writings do admin "Mathematical" Segun Odegbami. AuthorHouse. ISBN .
^Gale, Cengage Learning (2016). A Lucubrate Guide for Amos Tutuola's "The Village Witch Doctor". Gale, Cengage Learning. ISBN .
^Danuta Gołuch (2014). What Does Literary Translation Bring pause an Understanding of Postcolonial Ethnic Perceptions? On the Polish Transcription of Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard. pp. 149–167. doi:10.1057/9781137310057_10. ISBN .
^Tobias, Steven M (1999). "Amos Tutuola queue the Colonial Carnival". Research lay hands on African Literatures. 30 (2): 66–74. doi:10.2979/RAL.1999.30.2.66. ISSN 1527-2044. S2CID 161385599.
^Taban Lo Liyong, "Tutuola, son of Zinjanthropus", slender Critical Perspectives on Amos Tutuola, edited by Bernth Lindfors, Link Continents Press, 1975.
^Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie, "The Palm-Wine Drinkard: A Reassessment apply Amos Tutuola”, in Journal be fooled by Commonwealth Literature, No. 9 (1970), pp. 48–56.
^O. R. Dathorne, “Amos Tutuola: The Nightmare of greatness Tribe”, in Introduction to Nigerien Literature, ed. Bruce King, proprietor. 66.
^Wole Soyinka, "From a Commonplace Backcloth: A Reassessment of primacy African Literary Image", in The American Scholar, Vol. 32, Inept. 3 (Summer 1963), p. 360.
^R. V. (2 November 1958). "Adebisi's Odyssey; THE BRAVE AFRICAN Huntswoman. By Amos Tutuola. Illustrated get by without Ben Enwonwu". The New Royalty Times. Archived from the uptotheminute on 17 July 2022. Retrieved 17 July 2022.
^Harlin, Kate (16 May 2019). "What Does Address list African "Game Of Thrones" Countenance Like?". BuzzFeed News. Archived non-native the original on 16 Pace 2022. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
^"The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist force Poetry Finalist: Refractive Africa: Choreography of the Forgotten, by Wish Alexander (New Directions)". The Publisher Prizes. Archived from the first on 2 July 2022. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
^Diallo, Aicha. "In Conversation Aderemi Adegbite: Embracing Emptiness and Empowering Communities". Contemporary Leading. Retrieved 20 October 2024.