A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF J.P CLARK'S THE RAFT AND FEMI OSOFISAN’S ANOTHER RAFT

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Department of English and Linguistics

ABSTRACT

Substantial amount of African literary works are adaptation of older classical, Elizabethan modern and even African playwrights. These adaptations show that writers admit to being influence by other playwright but not without elements of their creative imagination in most cases. What their creative imagination in their literacy work shows is that the claim that adaptation is akin to imitation is false. Thus this paper is a comparative study of J.P Clark’s The Raft and Femi Osofisan’s Another Raft as a literary adaptation the study brings out adaptations used in Femi Osofisan’s Another Raft from J.P Clark’s The Raft.

1.1     INTRODUCTION

Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Literature describes adaptation as an attempt to achieve medium of expression through the medium of inherited material”. Thus the source material in itself is a raw material used as by the artist to practice his creativity on. It is important to note that adaptation should ote be used as tool for plagiarism especially by literacy artist.

Adaptation is undoubtedly the means of relocating the context of an existing story to an entirely different setting or period to update the initial story, change its ideological purpose, create an entirely new perspective to the story etc. The use of adaptation by literary scholars can be use for cultural or historical references just as we see in Osofisan’s Another Raft He adapts The Raft by Clark which discusses the socio-political diriftedness of the Nigerian society towards doom and goes beyond by creating a possible way of solution which for him is (UNITY and TOGETHERNESS). Adaptation is universal and has been carried out by several playwright all over the world for various reasons. Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (1928) is an adaptation of john Gay's The Beggar's Opera  (18 Century), and was later adapted by wole Soyinka and he called it Opera Wonyosi  (1977). the bacchae of euripides by wole Soyinka is an adaptation of The Bacchae by  Euripides, so also is The gods are Not to Blame by Ola Rotimi an adaptation of Sophocles’ King Oedipus.