The Aesthetic Use of Proverbs in Toni Duruaku’s Silhouettes and A Matter of Identity

Abstract

The proverb in the Igbo social matrix remains a documentation of the lives of the people at a particular time. It is a timeless truth in the form of a simple illustration that exposes a fundamental reality of life. The proverb is thus regarded as the wisdom of many and the wits of one in that it is a word of wisdom with deep meaning which people - especially the Igbos – use for the purpose of language aesthetics. As a form of language aesthetics, creative writers use proverbs in their works as a sort of embellishments and a proof of heir deep knowledge in their cultures. This paper, examines the aesthetic use of proverbs in Toni Duruaku’s Silhouettes and A Matter of Identity. Using Wolfgang Iser’s readers-response theory of ‘aesthetic reception’ as the theoretical framework, the paper exposes readers to the phenomenological philosophy of proverbs in the texts. The paper suggests that readers of the plays and other literary materials, against the background of the incident in a literary material, should reformulate and re-interpret the importance of language aesthetics in literary texts.