A Phenomenology of Selected Postproverbial Poetry of Jack Mapanje

Abstract

Studies on Jack Mapanje’s poetry are largely postcolonial and on the poet’s use of Malawian lore but hardly on his use of proverbs. Yet Mapanje deploys proverbs sufficiently in his poetry for the deployment to merit study. Therefore, this study examines the deployment of the umbilical-cordage-of-peculiar-hounds proverb in selected poems from Mapanje’s Skipping Without Ropes. It adopts phenomenology. The choice of the theory is to allow the critic to move with aplomb between the four selected poems in a resolute hunt for the essence of the proverb in the poetry. The study reveals that Mapanje ruptures the original meaning of the proverb which is about choice and thirst to see the wonder and beauty of creation as cause to travel to a distant land but deploys it to treat flight from barbarous tyranny. The poetry describes state abuse of dissenters, peine forte er dure, imprisonment and death, and threats to life as cause enough to flee one’s country. The rhetorical transformation of the proverb in semantic terms makes the idiom behind the poetry postproverbial. The study also advances Mapanje’s penchant for “rhetoric of animality”, ritual aesthetics and pit-death symbolism and recommends that Mapanje’s deployment of proverb in other poetry merits further study.