Go to AfricaBib home

Go to AfricaBib home AfricaBib Go to database home

bibliographic database
Line
Previous page New search

The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here

Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Soyinka's ritual drama: unity, postmodernism, and the mistake of the intellect
Author:Haney (II), W.S.
Year:1990
Periodical:Research in African Literatures
Volume:21
Issue:4
Pages:33-54
Language:English
Geographic term:Nigeria
Subjects:literature
drama
About person:Wole Soyinka (1934-)
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819320
Abstract:Wole Soyinka explores the ritual form not as an ahistorical ideal but as an examination of history, raising the historic to cosmic proportions. His representation of the experience of unity in West African myth is complemented by analogous representations in another non-Western tradition, the Vedic wisdom of ancient India, which also describes the structure of binary oppositions as being subsumed by a coexistence of opposites. This paper focuses upon the mechanics of integration between essence and materiality, unity and diversity, in two plays of Soyinka, 'A dance of the forests' (1963) and 'The road' (1965). The present author argues that the notion of the coexistence of opposites provides a logical answer to postmodernist dilemmas, and that this answer, as conveyed through Soyinka's portrayal of the Yoruba transitional abyss and its effects upon the audience, can be elucidated by the Vedic theory of the interdependence of different levels of consciousness and language. Given the vast tradition of West African mythology and Vedic poetics, the author focuses not on their theoretical diversity but on their descriptions of the process by means of which people gain direct experience of expanded consciousness. The conclusion is that Soyinka represents Yoruba mythology as a cultural system enmeshed in the conflicted environments of modern Africa. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
Views
Cover