This study deploys Historicism as a literary discourse to the analysis
of the selected writings of Isidore Okpewho, Elechi Amadi and Biyi
Bandele. The study argues that Historicism emerged in the 19th Century
as a method of investigating how texts of all kinds come to terms with
their putative contexts. In spite of this, the application of
Historicism to the analysis of texts on the internecine Nigerian Civil
War and the reconstruction of the roles of Nigerians in the prosecution
of the Second World War has been sparing. This thesis, therefore,
demonstrates the applicability of the discourse of historicism to
Isidore Okpewho's The Last Duty, Elechi Amadi's Sunset In Biafra, and
Biyi Bandele's Burma Boy. It argues that, writing as historicists, these
writers appropriate historical events, vicarious and personal
experiences, and recorded or documented activities, all of which had
hitherto passed into history as past. Having been refined and
reconstituted, these variegated materials appear aesthetically
resplendent as novels, as new experiences, conformable to the patterns
of literary discourse. This study thus argues that, the novels that
emerge from this social process are never complete without relating them
to the minutest discourse that shapes them and to which the texts
invariably respond. The thesis is divided into four chapters for proper
articulation of the discourse. Chapter One is an introduction, which
deals with (Conceptual Background, Statement of the Problem, Objectives
of the Study, Justification, Scope, Methodology, Historicism and
Literature, Assessment Criteria of poetics of historicism, and
Literature Review. Chapter Two examines the Reconstruction of Nigerian
Civil War in Isidore Okpewho's The Last Duty and Elechi Amadi's Sunset
In Biafra. Chapter Three deals with the Discourse of Second World War As
a Historical Event in Biyi Bandele's Burma Boy. And Chapter Four is the
concluding chapter.