Yoruba Symbolism as Indigenous Knowledge in Amos Tutuola’s The Palm Wine Drinkard

This study critically examines Yoruba symbolism in Amos Tutuola’s The Palm Wine Drinkard as a repository of indigenous knowledge, challenging readings that categorise the narrative as mere folklore or fantasy. The study adopts a culturally informed symbolic reading, analysing colour, space, ritual, and character as vehicles for moral, ethical, and cosmological knowledge. Findings demonstrate that white, red, and black operate as moral–cosmic indicators, while spatial boundaries, including Dead’s Town and Unreturnable Heaven’s Town, encode ethical and relational learning. Ritual acts, drumming, and dance are interpreted as embodied mechanisms of knowledge transmission, while characters such as the Complete Gentleman and the wife function as epistemic mediators, guiding moral reasoning and relational awareness. By situating the narrative within an indigenous epistemological framework, the study shows that Tutuola’s work produces structured knowledge, revealing the epistemic richness of African literature and asserting its value within contemporary literary and decolonial discourse. The analysis highlights the importance of reading African texts on their own epistemic terms, rather than through Western interpretive categories, offering implications for literary criticism, pedagogy, and the recovery of African knowledge systems.