Manifestations of Hyperbole in the Imagined Voice of Selected African Youths’ Poetry

Abstract

The study is premised on the nexus between form and content. It looks at the manifestations of hyperbole by poets to exploit the underlying concerns of the referent subjects and persona(s) in the poems under study. Hyperbole is explored in its diverse existence in which the various poems analyzed, address. Its effectiveness is hereby critiqued in the analyses of youth agency and the prominent concerns of existentialism and disillusionment in the African context. In particular, this study examines how Ebenezer Agu’s, 20.35: Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry makes use of hyperbole to depict the imagined voice of the contemporary youth in Africa. The study argues that the imagined voice acts as a representation of the youth in contemporary Africa by exploring their concerns through hyperbole, hence significant in the understanding of questions familiar to most young people of African lineage. Using the postcolonial and new criticism literary theories, the study focuses on the analysis of sixteen selected poems that make use of exaggerated literary elements which are geared towards depicting the African youth’s imagined voice hypothesized to be in existential crisis and disillusioned. I observe that the selected poets in this anthology present their poetic imagination in a pessimistic way as an optimistic challenge to the African youth to live freely by reaffirming a sense of self.