New Edition of Rowland Abiodun's Landmark Book Yorùbá Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art to be Published by Compcros in 2022

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

                                                  

                                                                               

                                                           

                            

                                                 

                                                                             New Edition

                                                                                     of 

                Rowland Abiodun's Landmark Book Yorùbá Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art 

                                                                                  to be

                                                                Published by Compcros in 2022

                                                                             

                                             

                                                                       Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                  Compcros

                                                        Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems 

                                           "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search  of Knowledge"

 The second edition of one of the most remarkable books ever published on African arts and literatures, Rowland Abiodun's Yorùbá Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, is to be published by Compcros in 2022.

 

This greatly expanded edition includes a new and rich autobiographical preface relating the author's journey from Yorùbá culture bearers in his native Ọ̀wọ̀ in Nigeria, to Government College, Ibadan, to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, to the University of Toronto, Canada, and then to University of Ifẹ̀, Nigeria and finally to Amherst College in the US. This has been a journey across indigenous Yorùbá and Western educational systems, resulting eventually in this book harmonizing the contradictions of these forms of thought and action.

In this work, Abiodun explores, in great detail, the interrelationship of the visual, performative, and verbal arts, philosophy, and spirituality in Yorùbá discourse. He goes beyond conventional understandings in generating insights constituting some of the world's richest fusions of thought and image, of myth and philosophy, of narrative and exposition. These are all dramatically conveyed through the glorious rhythms of the Yorùbá language, meticulously translated into English. These offerings are complemented by a companion website showcasing Abiodun’s verbal renderings of some of these beauties of the Yorùbá language.

This second edition is being totally redesigned to highlight the force of the feast of images it embodies, facilitating a better grasp of the image/thought unity of Yorùbá philosophy, and by implication, of African thought in general. The edition also includes reviews of the first edition published by Cambridge, thereby assembling striking pieces on Yorùbá art and thought, complementing the main text. 

 

This book will be published in paperback, hardback and electronic forms. The vision is to get the work into the hands of scholars, students and the general public through various price ranges, accommodating various budgets.

 

The ultimate drive is to help catalyze transformation in African arts studies curricula and research, as well as expanding the general knowledge base, from excessive reliance on the Western aesthetic tradition, to exploring what African thinkers have to say about their own art, stimulating insights into the value of these ideas for other arts.