The Significance of a Personal and National Bildung and Its Nonlinear Nature: Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy (Published)
Derived from the German philosophy of Bildung, literary works that can be categorized as bildungsroman have mainly focused on the individuals’ maturation and education. This study aims to expand on this notion of Bildung and observe how an individual’s maturation and education ultimately leads to the expansion of such action of becoming on a nationwide scale. By analyzing the relationship between the two different cases of bildung in action in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times and Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, this study aims to analyze in depth the correlation between the individuals’ maturation and the national bildung. The study examines the concepts of individual and national bildungs present in Dickens’s Hard Times, both within the characters at play as well as the Victorian English society immediately following the Industrial Revolution period. Outside the literary and fictional realms, the study finds the notion of the two kinds of bildungs in Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy. By comparing the two observations, the study ultimately suggests that the two bildungs do not necessarily share a chronologically linear relationship between each other.
Keywords: Bildung, Character Development, Culture, Education, Maturation, Victorian Era
HIP-LIFE AS A GENRE IN GHANA: A LINGUSTIC ANALYSIS OF SOME SELECTED GHANAIAN HIP-LIFE SONGS (Published)
Ghanaian hip-life songs are considered as one of the other folk songs, wise sayings, proverbs, and myths which must be studied in the broader context of African culture. The connotative and denotative meanings that are derived from the songs depict the points of view of the youth who skilfully craft, perform, listen and participate in the songs to a very large extent. Hip-life musicians always try to portray their culture by using codified and pedantic language such as alliteration, imagery, metaphor, hyperbole, simile, rhythm etc. by reaching out to the youth and this should be looked at critically. In this study, some selected Hip-life songs have been translated into English language and their devices employed by Hip-life artistes analysed. The songs selected include: Lord Kenya’s songs titled “Mmoborowa”(The Downtrodden) and “Yeresom Sika” (We are Worshipping Money); Joe Fraizer’s song ‘Yaa Maame’ (Yaa’s mother); Obrafour’s songs ‘‘Odo’’(Love) and “Okukuseku” and Obour’s song ‘Bo Atentenben’ (Blow Trumpets). The conclusion revealed the role of Hip-life songs in literary studies.
Keywords: Culture, Hip-life, linguistic analysis, music and literature
THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOME NIGERIAN YORUBA AND IBO PROVERBS ON CAREFULNESS (Published)
The purpose of this Article is to show how the Yoruba and the Ibo people of Nigeria often use proverbs to express the need for people to be careful in whatever they do in life. This research work focuses on the proverbs that Nigerian Yoruba and Ibo people often use to express carefulness in people, so as to guarantee better life for them, and of course to make the people stay out of trouble at all times. This research work therefore aims at exploring the social implications of the usage of the proverbs that instill carefulness in people, within the Yoruba and the Ibo people’s cultural terrain.
Keywords: Carefulness, Checking, Correcting, Culture, Oral, Warning