ABSTRACT
Igbo proverbs feature abundantly in Chinua Achebe’s novels, mainly in translation in the language of the novel. As frozen discourse with fixed and ready-made meanings that attain momentary relevance where experience takes place, proverbs unveil the incident that gave rise to their evocation as a particular replay of what is already in the repertoire of human experience. Whereas cultural apologists treat the proverbial wisdom of the cultural matrix of Chinua Achebe’s novels as unchallengeable rationality, and the point of continuity whereby Achebe becomes a spokesman of the cultural tradition, the actual functioning of proverbs in Achebe’s works is far more complex than referencing the cultural tradition and punctuating the text with flashes of insight. Instead, the proverbs act as matrices out of which the whole narrative unfolds, with the exfoliating narrative turning the proverbial wisdom on its head. In this chapter, Achebe’s Igbo proverbs, generally seen as validation of discourse and experience, are discussed in terms of their involvement in text formation, as well as subversive functioning in the texts. Building on Michael Riffaterre’s model of textual generation, the study demonstrates that the textual system is articulated by simultaneously expanding and problematising the proverbial matrix.
