ABSTRACT
This chapter will systematize the recurrence of disasters in Femi Osofisan’s farcical novella, Kolera Kolej, and the machinations of destiny in Ola Rótìmí’s tragic play, The Gods Are Not to Blame, by reading textual plot with terms derived from Yorùbá metalanguage of experience and events, viz., kété and ìṣẹ̀lẹ̀. While kété, an ideophone, is the term for “promptness” and “convention,” ìṣẹ̀lẹ̀, a compound term for place and happenstance, denotes occurrence, usually relating to that which is unexpected or unplanned but, nevertheless, could be envisaged. The two terms are joined and further reorganized in the meta-narrative proverb “lẹ́yìn kété nibi ń ṣẹlẹ̀” (catastrophe breaks out in the wake of missed time). The punctual occurrence arrives on time, as scheduled, and as expected. The tardy (late or delayed) relates to the prompt, even in its deviation. The length of the experience of the disastrous relates to the amount of time expended on the restoration of the regime of the prompt. Yorùbá metalanguage of events collocates duration and location, two irreducible components of events as variants of the ideophone: instituted (emplaced), constitutions of experiences that could not be presented otherwise.
