Academic literature on the topic 'Wole Soyinka'

It is always difficult to define exactly why a particular author has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. This approach will deal with four different aspects which may have contributed to Wole Soyinka’s award. It cannot be denied that Soyinka is the author of an extensive and richly varied work, which has been appreciated by critics the world over. Especially the satirical qualities of his style have been praised on many occasions. But we have to focus our attention on two other important aspects. We can only achieve a full understanding of Soyinka's dramas when we interpret them against the background of Yoruba drama and Yoruba cultural tradition. And we can only appreciate Soyinka's work if we pay attention to the social context in which it is situated. This political commitment, as well as the international reputation Soyinka has helped to create as a director and an actor, are essential elements that have contributed to this Nobel Prize award.

In fact, What became Ake started out with me wanting to write a biography of an uncle, a very remarkable uncle of mine, who is mentioned here, Daodu, Rev Kuti. I think some of you have heard of Fela, the Nigerian musician. Daodu was his father and a very remarkable individual.Wole Soyinka in Jo Gulledge (ed.), ‘Seminar on Ake with Wole Soyinka’, in The Southern Review (Baton Rouge), 23, 3, July 1987, p. 513.The publication of Ake: the years of childhood (London, 1981) won Wole Soyinka admirers among those who had never read his poetry, novels, newspaper articles, or criticism, never seen his films or plays. In a seminar on Ake which he gave in Louisiana during March 1987, Soyinka said that the autobiography had started from a desire to write a biography. He went on to say that he had ‘received letters about the book from the strangest parts of the world’.1 The autobiography was widely and favourably reviewed, it was awarded prizes and contributed to the elevation of Soyinka's reputation throughout the world—including Sweden, where he was subsequently presented with the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Abstract The paper seeks to ascertain through the linguistic approach whether Wole Soyinka's The Trials of Brother Jero is actually, as propagated in some quarters, a focus on the problem of communication. Analysis is carried out on the lexico-semantic and morpho-syntactic features of the text, and in the process other linguistic flourishes typical of Soyinka are highlighted. These include especially features of graphetic and graphological importance. The study shows that Soyinka is a playwright with a penchant for linguistic communication. His dramatic raison d'être is to reach his Nigerian audience as stylistically as possible. Résumé Le but de cette recherche est l'étude linguistique de la pièce The Trials of Brother Jero de Wole Soyinka, et plus spécifiquement la vérification du constat chez certains critiques littéraires que cette pièce est liée en particulier au problème de la communication. Nous avons procédé à une analyse basée sur les aspects lexico-sémantiques et morphosyntaxiques du texte, et chemin faisant, nous avons découvert d'autres aspects stylistiques propres à Soyinka. Il s'agit surtout de caractéristiques d'importance graphique et graphologique. L'étude prouve que c'est à son penchant pour la communication langagière que Soyinka doit sa célébrité en tant que dramaturge. Son art dramatique n'a d'autre raison d'être que de créer d'une manière pragmatique une entente psychologique avec son public nigérien.

Wole Soyinka, auteur d'une vingtaine de pièces de théâtre, de deux romans, de poèmes et de bien d'autres œuvres est aujourd'hui considéré comme l'un des piliers de la littérature africaine. Il est apprécié par les spécialistes de littérature non pas pour la quantité de ses œuvres mais plutôt pour leur qualité, bref pour son talent d'écrivain. Il a su dans son œuvre intégrer les éléments de la tradition orale yorouba tels les mythes, les proverbes, etc. . . Et ceux de la culture occidentale. Soyinka analyse les rapports conflictuels entre la tradition et la modernité et définit le rôle que doit jouer l'artiste c'est-à-dire l'écrivain dans les sociétés traditionnelles et modernes. Cette démarche permet d'aboutir à une synthèse, à une symbiose de la tradition et de la modernité dans la culture africaine. En tant qu'écrivain engagé, Soyinka dénonce toutes formes d'oppression et milite pour la solidarité et la justice sociale. Son engagement politique se manifeste surtout à travers le théâtre qu'il considère comme son arme révolutionnaire
Author of about twenty plays, two novels, poems and other works, Soyinka is considered nowadays as one of the pillars of African literature. Experts in literature appreciate him not for the quantity of his works but for their quality, in a word, for his artistry. In his works, he has succeeded in combining the elements of the Yoruba oral tradition with those of the western culture. Soyinka analyses the conflict between tradition and modernity and defines the part the writer as an artist has to play in the traditional and modern societies. This will lead to a synthesis of tradition and modernity in African literature. As a committed writer, Soyinka denounces all forms of oppression and militates in favor of solidarity and social justice. His political commitment appears in his drama which he considers as a revolutionary weapon

Na moderna literatura africana, poucos autores se destacam tanto quanto o dramaturgo, poeta, ensaísta, memorialista e ficcionista nigeriano, de origem iorubá, Wole Soyinka, internacionalmente célebre e ganhador do Prêmio Nobel de Literatura em 1986. Soyinka é conhecido sobretudo como dramaturgo, e seu teatro se caracteriza pelo uso de uma variedade de gêneros literários, formas, linguagens extraliterárias, como a dança e a música, e outros recursos relacionados à cultura iorubá. A obra de Soyinka, escrita em inglês, incorpora tanto elementos das literaturas ocidentais quanto das africanas, e seu inglês é marcado pela constante visitação da oralidade iorubá em provérbios, metáforas e fragmentos de poemas tradicionais assim como sua dramaturgia incorpora elementos do teatro tradicional de seu povo. Acima de tudo, seus enredos, que incluem temas atuais como corrupção, lutas por poder e conflitos entre o indivíduo e seu grupo, estão alicerçados na visão de mundo e cosmogonia iorubá, contendo ainda diversas referências mitológicas e rituais. Em outras palavras, Wole Soyinka se caracteriza, antes de tudo, como um escritor iorubá, cuja obra, cosmopolita em seus temas e conflitos, encontra suas raízes e enquadramento filosófico na visão de mundo de seu povo. É nessa forte presença de elementos iorubás que se encontra um dos maiores interesses das obras de Wole Soyinka para o Brasil. Sabemos que, nos últimos tempos, está havendo uma considerável valorização de elementos de origem africana presentes na cultura nacional, dentre eles, os encontrados nas religiões de matriz africana, que se mostram verdadeiros repositórios de mitos e símbolos de grande riqueza semântica. Tais mitos e símbolos presentes nessas religiões são majoritariamente de origem iorubá. Ler a obra de Soyinka no Brasil, portanto, é buscar uma nova forma de se relacionar com esses elementos e de valorizá-los em sua dimensão literária. Entre as peças de Wole Soyinka, a mais conhecida é provavelmente Death and the King’s Horseman, publicada em 1975 e com diversas realizações teatrais na Nigéria, Estados Unidos e Reino Unido. Baseada em uma situação real na Nigéria colonial, em que um costume do povo iorubá entrou em conflito com a ordem britânica, tal peça é aquela em que visão de mundo e mitologia iorubá estão mais bem articuladas com uma linguagem rica em gêneros e fragmentos da literatura oral iorubá, sendo particularmente proveitosa para uma aproximação cultural. Esta tese oferece uma análise da peça baseada em noções da cultura, da mitologia e da visão de mundo iorubá e nas teorias estéticas e metafísicas do próprio Wole Soyinka. Destacam-se nesta análise os aspectos simbólicos, míticos e metafísicos, assim como os estéticos. Essa análise é precedida de um estudo sobre dimensões da cultura iorubá importantes para o entendimento da peça, tais como história, religião, mitologia, filosofia e artes. Em seguida, as teorias estéticas de Wole Soyinka são estudadas sobre o pano de fundo das discussões literárias vigentes na África no período em que Soyinka engendrava tais teorias. É a partir desses elementos que a peça é analisada. Acima de tudo, esta tese oferece uma tradução de Death and the King’s Horseman que busca valorizar seu conteúdo lírico, suas várias linguagens e suas perspectivas filosóficas, com base nos estudos que foram feitos nos capítulos precedentes, concluindo a tese com observações sobre o processo de tradução.
In modern African literature, few authors stand out as much as the Nigerian playwright, poet, essayist, memorialist, and novelist, of Yoruba origin, Wole Soyinka, internationally acknowledged as the winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature. Soyinka is known above all as a playwright, and his theatre is characterized by the use of a variety of literary genres, forms, extra-literary languages, such as dance and music, and other resources related to Yoruba culture. Soyinka’s work, written in English, includes elements from both Western and African literatures, and his English is marked by the constant presence of Yoruba orality in proverbs, metaphors and fragments of traditional poems as much as his dramaturgy embodies elements of the traditional theatre of his people. Above all, his plots, in such current themes as corruption, struggle for power and conflicts between individual and the community, are stippled on Yoruba worldview and cosmogony, containing as well many mythological and ritual references. In other words, Wole Soyinka characterizes himself, above all, as a Yoruba writer, whose work finds its roots and philosophical framework in the worldview of his people. It is in the strong presence of Yoruba elements in virtually all the ambits that we find one of the greatest interests of Soyinka’s works for Brazil. It is well-known that, in later years, there has been an increasing valuation and interest for elements of African origin in national culture, including those found in African-Brazilian religions, which are actually pools of myths and symbols of great semantic wealth. These myths and symbols found in those religions are, in their majority, of Yoruba origin. Reading Soyinka’s works in Brazil, therefore, is a way of relating to these elements and valuing them in their literary dimension. Among Soyinka’s works, the best-known is probably Death and the King’s Horseman, published in 1975 and with many productions in Nigeria, the United States and the United Kingdom. Based on an actual event that took place in colonial Nigeria, in which a Yoruba native habit conflicted with the British rule, this play is the one in which Yoruba mythology and worldview are best articulated with language that is rich in genres and fragments of Yoruba oral literature, being particularly fruitful for a cultural encounter. This dissertation offers an analysis of the play base on notions of Yoruba culture, mythology, and worldview and on Soyinka’s own aesthetic and metaphysical theories. This analysis highlights the symbolical, mythical and metaphysical, as well as aesthetic aspects. It is preceded by a study on important dimensions of Yoruba culture for the understanding of the play, such as history, religion, mythology, philosophy and arts. After that, Wole Soyinka’s aesthetic theories are studied against the background of the current literary discussions in Africa at the time. It is from these elements that the play is studied. Above all, this dissertation offers a translation of Death and the King’s Horseman that values its lyrical content, its many artistic languages and its philosophical perspectives based on the studies conducted in previous chapters and concluding with observations about the translation process.

Sur une interpretation des realites geographique, sociale, economique et politique de la route, wole soyinka tisse des reseaux metaphoriques et mythiques se structurant sur la figure centrale d'ogun, dieu yoruba du fer, de la creativite et de la destruction. . . Et aussi dieu de la route. C'est autour du theme de la route, qui parcourt toute l'oeuvre de soyinka (theatre, roman, poesie, essais) que s'articule une multiplicite de correspondances en rapport avec l'ambivalence d'ogun : ceci conduit a un questionnement sur les notions de route devorante et de "dieu glouton", de vie et de mort, d'accident et de sacrifice, d'art et de science. Le langage verbal et non-verbal de the road permet d'acceder aux routes de la "transition" - espace metaphysique yoruba reinterprete et transforme en mythologie personnelle par soyinka. Conjointement a ces differents parcours, soyinka trace des itineraires lies a la quete et toute la problematique deja evoquee se repercute sur la route du pouvoir, avec ses chauffards de la religion, de la politique et meme de la critique litteraire. Les ecrits de soyinka se renouvellent constamment, alliant mythe et histoire, comedie et tragedie, satire et poesie, parodie, humour et ironie. Ces multiples routes, fruit de "l'eclectisme selectif" de l'auteur, se rejoignent dans le ruban de mobius que soyinka s'approprie comme "route d'ogun" : ce "cercle mathe-magique" temoigne bien d'une pensee remarquablement coherente et antidogmatique qui se structure non pas sur une voie unique et peremptoire mais plutot sur la multiplicite des routes du systeme de divination ifa
From the geographical, social, economic and political reality of the road, wole soyinka weaves a network of metaphorical and mythical variations linked to the central figure of ogun, the yoruba god of iron, war, creativity and destruction. . . And also god of the road. The theme of the road pervades soyinka's plays, novels, poems and essays. It is connected with ogun's ambivalence and encompasses the relationships between the road as a man-eater and as a "gluttonous god", life and death, accident and sacrifice, art and science. The verbal and non-verbal language of the road gives insights into the road as the symbolic representation of "transition", a yoruba metaphysical notion that soyinka appropriates, revitalizes and integrates into his own private mythology. Concurrently, soyinka maps out other itineraries related to the quest motif;he also explores the realms of power, showing that some "specialists" of politics, religion and even literary criticism are the metaphorical equivalent of reckless and dangerous drivers. Soyinka's writings are a constant renewal of myth and history, comedy and tragedy, satire and poetry, parody, humour and irony. It is through his "selective eclecticism" that soyinka appropriates the mobius strip as his personal symbol of "ogun's road": this "mathe-magical ring" perfectly illustrates soyinka's highly coherent vision which is based not on a single prescriptive and dogmatic road but rather on the multiplicity of roads as found in the ifa divination system

Le rite traditionnel , les croyances , les mythes et les legendes yorouba constituent les fondements de cette etude du theatre rituel de wole soyinka. Le mythe du dieu ogun , premier acteur et premier vainqueur de la transition , est l'element sous-jacent a l'ensemble de la recherche. Nous examinons d'abord les aspirations de l'individu , en integrant la dimension collective , qui est le point d'ancrage de la tragedie soyinkienne. Le mecanisme du sacrifice est ainsi considere a travers l'exploration des rites de passage , de purification et de communion. Eu egard au role du theatre rituel dans la realisation de la cohesion sociale , nous analysons ensuite les phenomenes de mediation et de transition , en mettant l'accent sur la nature et le pouvoir devastateur des etres transitionnels, en l'occurence les mediateurs du rite et les chefs spirituels. Le besoin d'agents de changement obeissant a l'archetype ogunien apparait comme un element central de la philosophie soyinkienne. De leur double fonction de guerisseurs et d'acteurs de la reforme sociale se degage un espoir de regeneration de la societe. Des facteurs rituels tels que la musique , les dances , le phenomene egungun et le masque permettent alors de mettre en evidence l'interet de la communaute yorouba pour le theatre.

Le theatre de wole soyinka plonge ses racines dans la culture traditionnelle yoruba. Et, dans son esthetique comme dans son essence, c'est un theatre qui fonctionne selon le principe rituel. Dans un tel contexte fondamentalement religieux, le phenomene de la vie et de la mort devient complexe, recouvrant differentes dimensions et regions de l'existentiel. Le symbole prend alors toute sa signification. Deux cadres operatoires ont ete determines pour saisir le mode de representation et la signification des symboles de vie et de mort: un cadre socioreligieux avec les rites et certaines de leurs composantes visuelles et auditives, et un cadre relatif a l'environnement naturel avec des elements comme l'aquatique, le tellurique, le vent etc. . . En somme, dans l'ensemble de ses dimensions existentielles, l'homme de soyinka est au centre du binaire vie-mort. Mais bien que les forces de mort soient constamment presentent dans son theatre, c'est tout de meme la notion de vie qui apparait comme la realite fondamentale et qui sous-tend la dynamique de l'imaginaire de soyinka
Soyinka's theatre has its roots in traditional yoruba culture. Also, it is aesthetically and fundamentally based on ritual. In such a profoundly religious context, life and death concept becomes very complex as it encompasses various dimensions and areas of the existential and gives the symbol all its significance. In order to comprehend the mode of representation and the meaning of life and death symbols, we have chosen two frames of reference. The first one is concerned with socio-religious realities and includes the rituals along with some of their visual and auditive components; the second in about the natural environment, and analyses such elements as water, earth, wind etc. On the whole, through every dimension of his existence, man is at the core of the life and death phenomenon. But although the forces of death are constantly present in soyinka's drama, it is the notion of life which is the underlying reality in his literary universe

Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, the first African recipient of this honour, for his body of works covering plays, novels and poetry. Soyinka is also a literary and cultural theorist, a memoirist, and a social activist, known internationally for his campaign against tyranny and injustice. This and many other dimensions of his career as a man of letters, his cultural background and the postcolonial context in which he writes flow freely into his creative works. This study describes Soyinka’s theatre, based on eight major plays published between 1960 and 1996. This is the peak of Soyinka’s literary career and provides the most illustrative instances of the maturation of his art and thematic concerns. Using the selected plays as focal points, a critical appraisal of Soyinka’s characters and their cosmos, and the development of the key ingredients of his theatre is undertaken. It is argued that Soyinka’s theatre portrays a liminal world in which myth, ritual and postcolonialism are ascendant elements. The main framework for this argument is Barthes’s poststructuralism but other theorists apply as well, including Bhabha, Eco, Foucault, Hutcheon, Jeyifo, Jung, Kristeva, Levinas, Olaniyan, Turner, Van Gennep, Vermeulen and Akker, and Soyinka himself. Accordingly, this study opens new frontiers on Soyinka by delving into key concepts such as liminality, postcoloniality, modernism, postmodernism, metamodernism, abjection, “othering”, and intertexuality as they apply to Soyinka’s theatre. It features a wide-ranging discourse on Soyinka’s “fourth stage” as a form of applied dramatic theory in which the poetics of myth and ritual and the postcolonial distinctions of Soyinka’s theatre find congruence. Myth and ritual ensconce Soyinka’s dramatis personae in a way that prepares them for and, crucially, prevents them from overcoming the gulf between their personal volitions and the will of their community.