Human suffering and tragic contradictions in Amechi Akwanya’s Pilgrim Foot

Bibliographic Data

ID9003202
AuthorsAbba A Abba (0000-0002-0320-360X, Federal University Lokoja, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume58
Issue1
Pages229-245
Publication date2020-11-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0021989420960508
OpenAlexW3098874512
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited3

Nigerian poet Amechi Akwanya’s Pilgrim Foot: A Collection of Poems (2005) has not received much critical attention. This is despite the collection’s important poetic meditation on human suffering, a subject that has troubled the imagination since time immemorial. Although scholars have read the central theme of the first sequence of this collection as man’s dispossession by his creator, its illumination of man’s confrontation with the tragic contradiction evident in human suffering has largely been ignored. Florence Orabueze (2015), for instance, has argued that Akwanya deploys the symbolism of the cross to signify man’s endless suffering in the face of natural disasters, suggesting that the search for freedom from these sufferings always ends in futility. Seeking to extend this argument, and relying on theoretical strategies drawn from the study of tragedy, this article examines the first sequence of Akwanya’s Pilgrim Foot: A Collection of Poems. I argue that the sequence belongs to the realm of tragic poetry, which interrogates man’s confrontation with suffering and the tragic contradiction that surrounds the celebrated myth of divine love for humanity

Art · Contradiction · Epistemology · Humanity · Literature · Mythology · Pilgrim · Poetry · Realm · Theme (computing · Theology · Tragedy (event · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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