MYTHOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION AND SIGNIFICANCES OF YORUBA FOLKTALES IN AMOS TUTUOLA’S SELECTED WORKS

Abstract

Folk tales, one of the most beautiful communicative techniques among human beings in the African oral tradition, have, throughout many decades, shown their importance in entertainment and people’s education. Like almost all the ethnic groups of the African continent, Yoruba people have their own folk tales which displays a great number of their customs. To make their customs known to all the other civilizations of the world, some Yoruba authors, among whom the prolific Tutuola, include them in their literary works. Through his use of Yoruba folktales, he revealed some of their cultural aspects which includes; the importance of myths, the concept of the supernatural and their living ways in The Palm-Wine Drinkardand Yoruba Folktales. This paper focuses not onlyon revealing some of the Yoruba customs aspects hidden in Amos Tutuola’s selected works, but it alsoshow how the use of these cultural components in contemporary literature can give birth to an original artistic work. In achieving this goal, the qualitative research approach, which consists of exploring the existing documents that are in accordance with the current research topic, were used. Based on the theoretical framework, sociological mythological criticisms that are also deemed convenient were applied.