A Mythical View on Amos Tutuola's The Palmwine Drinkard

Abstract

Myth is a fundamental tool used in creative writing to promote the cultural elements of a writer's background. As a social element, myth adopts the human and subhuman accounts of events in a given society while expressing a particular reality or truth about human experiences within the created order and the supra-sensible world. In African literature, myth serves as a literary material which depicts some social values such as norms, culture and tradition of a given society. This study reveals how Amos Tutuola   utilized character complexities and mythical elements to showcase the socio-cultural space of Africa in his play; The Palmwine Drinkard. Anchored on the Cultural Materialism Theory, the study posits that, the use of cultural materialism aids in narrating the complexity of mythology and its relationship as a social element with literature. In conclusion, the study reveals that the human society produces the textual elements that constitute the socially oriented literary creativity.