Things Fall Apart: Home

Governance, power, and authority among the Igbo people.

Explains how Igbo society enforced cultural expectations before British colonization.

Abstract: This article focuses on folklore and storytelling of the Igbo tribe of southeastern Nigeria. The author argues that the study of folklore, folk songs, and heroic recitations reveal the underlying cultural group-knowledge of a society and are the basis of social and cultural interactions and communications. Igbo folk traditions portray the tortoise as the holder of wisdom and a trickster. The author considers how storytelling fosters a sense of culture, community, and shared values among the Igbo.

Abstract: Examines Chinua Achebe's novel `Things Fall Apart,' based on Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of `heteroglossia' and diagolism. Achebe's novelistic agenda in drawing upon the Igbo oral traditions; Reasons for the appropriation by Achebe of ethnographic modes of representation; Demonstration of the feasibility of a selective appeal to `tradition' within the Igbo worldview.

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