Folkloric Imagery and Revolutionary Vision in Kofi Anyidoho’s A Harvest of Our Dreams: With Elegy for the Revolution

Abstract

Folklore is one of the core cultural values in traditional societies and writers who are conscious of its aesthetic relevance deploy it in their creative works. Folktale elicits imagery which underscores the relationship of humanity with nature and mythical elements. Writers exploit this relationship to establish traditionalism and pursue revolutionary vision in their works. Anyidoho uses his affiliation to, and understanding of, the Ewe cultural (one of the traditional societies in Ghana) milieu to comment on issues that are germane to the existence of the people in A Harvest of Our Dreams: With Elegy for the Revolution. This paper, through examination of some of the poems in the collection with Raymond Williams’s Cultural Materialism revealed that the poet, with poetic devices, uses folklore and traditional images to advocate for revolution in his society. The paper comes to the conclusion that the poems in the collection are replete with folklore and traditional imagery, which the poet deploys with poetic essence to satirise failings in his society.