Open Access"The City as Muse": A Context-Oriented Meta-Historical Reading of Toyin Falola's A Mouth Sweeter than Salt
Author(s) -
Ibrahim A. Odugbemi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
yoruba studies review /yoruba studies review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2578-692X
pISSN - 2473-4713
DOI - 10.32473/ysr.v1i2.130154
Subject(s) - subject (documents) , memoir , identity (music) , context (archaeology) , reading (process) , poetics , biography , literature , aesthetics , argument (complex analysis) , expression (computer science) , history , sociology , art , poetry , philosophy , linguistics , computer science , archaeology , biochemistry , chemistry , library science , programming language
A number of scholarly and critical arguments have explored the poetics of nonfiction, otherwise called life writing, as a sub-genre of prose literature. Against the common expectation of a detailed concentration on facts about the subject (the self or the other) which has made nonfiction to be seen in some quarters as a concern of history, such critical arguments have shown that this genre has its peculiar, predominant pattern and structure, which make it arguably a concern of the literary enterprise. A part of such arguments theoretically postulates that nonfiction is a meta-history, based on its identification of some textual and contextual properties and patterns of narration which transform the life account of the self or other into a meta-historical (and not historical) expression, and therefore makes such writing a concern of literature. In extension of this argument, this paper examines Toyin Falola's memoir, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt, as a genre of life writing and, especially, a form of autobiography, by showing how the setting, Ibadan, in its cultural and social formations, is depicted as having contributed to the self-awareness, self-image and identity of the subject, and how this reflection makes the narrative a meta-historical expression.