The Quest for Fulfillment: A Study of the Organic Unity of Christopher Okigbo’s Poetry

A comprehensive and systematic close-reading of Okigbo’s poetry from Four Canzones and other early poems to Path of Thunder and the unfinished “Anthem for Biafra’, this book unveils the narrative and dramatic continuity underlying Okigbo’s claim, in his preface to Labyrinths, that “although these poems were written and published separately, they are in fact organically related.” Using the traditional tools of explication du textes and assiduously rebuffing all obscurantist theoretical models, Azuonye delineates the character of the vicarious selves of the poet-protagonist through the labyrinths of his quest for fulfillment and brings powerful evidence of recurrent tropes and images from cross-cultural mythology to reconstruct the min-dramas, epics, romance, allegories, motifs, tale-types, etc that make up the narrative whole. This is a veritable open sesame to the complex and wonderful world of Okigbo’s poetry. Currently in press