Myth, Orality and Tradition in Ben Okri's Literary Landscape

This book is an appraisal of myth, Orality and tradition in Ben Okri s Literary Landscape. Okri uses magical realism as a vehicle to bridge the gap between the European literary tradition and the post-colonial socio-cultural societies ranging from Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific to Latin America. Undoubtedly, Ben Okri has been enormously influenced by Amos Tutuola ,D.O. Fagunwa and Wole Soyinka, who were the pioneers of magical realism in Nigerian literature. Okri s recourse to covert criticism of anthropocentrism and its attendant variables which locate humans at the centre of the world is grounded in both The Famished Road, and Songs of Enchantment. The two novels when read as records of the spirit world, in its relationship with the physical world, underscores the role of myth maker in African literature as both a technician and a visionary. He functions within the two roles effortlessly in his quest to gather, evaluate and analyse the materials available to him: words, wood, raffia, road, river, mountain or whatever, which in themselves carry a spirituality or an innate essence. Since forms and motifs already exist in the imaginative locale of such African writer.