“beyond the limits of the dream”: Delineating the mythic and ritual sequence in Okigbo’s poetry

Abstract

Myth is notably a complex cultural reality that can be approached and interpreted from various viewpoints. Myths generally tell stories about deities or heroic beings. They can be classified into three types: creation myths, eschatological myths, which describe catastrophic ends of the world and myths of gods and goddesses. What we find in the poetry of Okigbo is a combination of all these myths. Myths are the products of a racial or tribal group rather than the creation of an individual. Every culture has its own mythology, according to its cosmology. One hardly comes across a direct statement in his poetry, for he prefers his lines loaded with imagery, allusions, and symbols. This paper aims at delineating the mythic and ritual sequences in the poetry of Christopher Okigbo. Myths are the products of a racial or tribal group rather than the creation of an individual. Every culture has its own mythology, according to its cosmology. Okigbo does not allow for simplicity in the language of his poetry. Okigbo uses the sublime, the esoteric, and the mythic to place his poetry on a universal level.This critical inquirys adopts for its theoretical framework, the mythic/archetypal theory.

Keywords

• myth
• ritual
• symbolism
• archetype
• okigbo