Sex and Sexuality in Contemporary Nigerian Literature: A Case Study of Toni Kan's Nights of The Creaking Bed and Ballad of Rage

ABSTRACT

The newly experimented stylistic exploration in contemporary Nigerian literature is in the incorporation of sex and sexuality. Before now, writers stylized gestures with symbolised represented matters with sexual connotations. However, recently, prose is rapidly fading away from this established modest order. In Toni Kan’s Nights of the Creaking Bed and Ballad of Rage, it is observed that sexually-related taboos are reoccurring. Issues like love making, abortion, gay and lesbian love among others are receiving colourful attention. In the whirlwind of globalization, individual sexes, especially women in Africa, are beginning to own up to their sexual needs against the socio-cultural parameters of sexual correctness set by most cultures of Africa. This dissertation examines Toni Kan’s selected works, using postmodernist approach which exacerbates the depletion of socio-cultural attachment in African societies. It essentially views how Nigerian writers capture some alien values on sex and sexuality within the society which are products of socio-cultural, political and historic experiences that are central to the cognitive formation of individual characters in the society; thereby revealing a new trend known as pornotraiture; a graphical portrayal of sex and sexual narratives and should be considered topical as it determines population growth and control especially in populous Nigeria. It concludes that literature remains useful in the subject of sex education which campaigns for equal expression of sexualities and can help dismantle socially stigmatised sexual pattern especially in this globalized world that accommodates freedom of choice on alternative sexual patterns. The study hence provides academic materials for students, schools and researchers which would enhance greater improvement in the outcome of their academic performance and re-posit their attitude on the concept of sex and sexuality without socio-cultural interference. Furthermore, the study could serve as a tool for policy makers in creating laws that capture the diverse sexual orientations of the populace which would be free from discrimination and punishment. In this manner, the research exposes Africans/Nigerians to the global world that permits variegated sexualities as their contemporary literatures reveal, and could stand in contest with other literatures from the Western world which capture global thematic concerns such as the one studied.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page i

Declaration ii

Certication iii

Dedication iv

Acknowledgements v

Abstract vi

Table of Contents vii

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study 

1.2 Statement of the Problem 

1.3 Aim and Objectives of Study

1.4 Scope of the Study 

1.5 Signicance of Study 

1.6 Methodology 

1.7 Biography of Toni Kan Onwordi 

CHAPTER TWO

THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK/ REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Queer and Postmodernist Literary Theory 

2.2 Critical Perspectives On Toni Kan’s Nights of the Creaking Bed 

2.3 Critical Perspectives on Kan’s Ballad of Rage 

2.4 Male and Female Sexualities and the Social Construction 

2.5 The Aesthetics and Style in Pornotraiture 

2.6 Extending Sexual Margins: Gay Features in Chimamanda Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck 

2.7 All the Need is Sex: A Seditious Female Sexualities in Se Atta’s Everything Good Will Come 

2.8 Rex Odoemenam’s Far Together and Discourse of Sexuality 

CHAPTER THREE

URBAN SETTLERS, SOCIAL VICES AND THE CREAKING BED IN TONI KAN’S NIGHTS OF THE CREAKING BED

3.1 The Bed Would Creak Louder: A Sexual Magic of Men 

3.2 Sex, Matrimony, Suburban and City Life 

CHAPTER FOUR

SEX AND RELATED VICES IN TONI KAN’S BALLAD OF RAGE

4.1 Lust, Promiscuity and Indelity 

4.2 Homosexuality and the Policing of Non-Normative Sexuality 

4.3 Prelude to a Kiss: Toni Kan’s Music and Sex 

CHAPTER FIVE

RAPE, CORRUPTION AND BRUTALITY BY THE UNIFORM

MEN AND TONI KAN’S STYLE

5.1 Rape and Uniform Men 

5.2 Corruption and Brutality by Uniform Men 

5.3 Stylistics of Toni Kan 

CHAPTER SIX

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION, CONTRIBUTION AND RECOM-

MENDATIONS

6.1 Summary 

6.2 Conclusion 

6.3 Contribution to Existing Knowledge 

6.4 Recommendations