SATIRIC AESTHETICS IN SELECTED NOVELS OF T. M. ALUKO AND MIKHAIL BULGAKOV

Abstract

Satire is a recurrent strategy reflecting multiplicity of usage including the portrayal of political and socioeconomic realities in novels. Earlier studies on the novels of T. M. Aluko and Mikhail Bulgakov have looked independently at satire with little attention paid to the comparison of their works. The deployment of satire in narrative strategies by T. M. Aluko and Mikahil Bulgakov were comparatively examined for cross cultural correspondence and dissonance with a view to identifying convergence and divergence between Nigeria and Russia. Marxism, on the defence of the oppressed and Archetypal Criticism, revealing recurrent character types and images were adopted as framework. T.M. Aluko`s One Man, One Matchet, His Worshipful Majesty, Chief the Honourable Minister and Mikhail Bulgakov`s Роковые Яйца (The Fatal Eggs), Мастер И Маргарита (The Master And Margarita) and Собачье Сердце (The Heart of a Dog) were purposively selected for their satirical contents, political and socioeconomic themes. The novels were subjected to literary criticism. Narrative strategies deployed by T. M. Aluko and Mikhail Bulgakov to satirise Nigerian and Russian societies, respectively are situational irony, disparagement, incongruity, and deflation. Situational irony manifests with contrastive ends, whereas in One Man, One Matchet the unanticipated violent reactions of farmers to the felling of infected trees met with arrests, in The Fatal Eggs, a mob action in the laboratory of failed red ray machine chicken producer goes unpunished. Disparagement emerges from the unresponsiveness of Afromacoland`s government to commonplace corruption, which Chief The Honourable Minister counterpoints with the inability to bring government officials to book. This is similar to the failure of Russia`s militia to apprehend Professor Woland and cohort for the magical atrocities unveiled in The Master And Margarita. In His Worshipful Majesty, incongruity is portrayed in the expenses litigants incur from extortion of chiefs who serve as corrupt judges in the traditional courts. Likewise, in The Heart of a Dog, it is impossible for Sharikov to access Russia`s housing scheme as a result of Professor Preobrazhensky`s indifferent attitude towards him. Incongruity reflects across two novels, Benja-Benja in One Man, One Matchet and Sharikov in The Heart of a Dog, both from humble background, with the one eventually having unlimited freedom and the other remaining in bondage despite being transformed from a dog to a man. Both authors portray deflation as bravery in different ways. In His Worshipful Majesty, Alaye commits suicide rather than being dethroned and exiled, while in The Fatal Eggs, Professor Persikov rather than flee allows himself to be killed. T. M. Aluko and Mikahil Bulgakov robustly deploy satirical narrative strategies to reflect similar and diverse realities in Nigeria and Russia. Their novels epitomise the interrelationships between the two regional literary cultures.