Wole Soyinka: A Leading Playwright and Poet In His Native Nigeria
Wole Soyinka is a leading playwright and poet in his native Nigeria, and inthe book Myth, Literature, and the African World, Soyinka presents his viewof African literature and its relationship to other literature's in theworld and shows how African literature particularly represents and links toreligious and social ideas in the African context. This book is made up oflectures given by Soyinka on related topics. Soyinka sees a politicalelement in defining Africa literature, just as he has been fighting againstthe idea of Negritude while at the same time supporting the idea that thereis a distinctive African literature to be examined. Soyinka finds thatmuch recent literature has been in the nature of protest, with a suddenawakening of a new generation of writers also attacking the romanticizedidea of Negritude. This is true in all forms of writing from a variety of There is a wide variety of staged theater in Africa, including notonly written plays but also storytelling, puppetry, and ritual drama. Withthe arrival of Christian missionary groups in the nineteenth century,traditional forms were supplemented with the development of folk operas,
Theater remains moretraditional in rural areas while theater in the cities is more concernedwith drama of an intense nature, such as the conflict brought about byopposing cultures: A major proportion of black theater in South Africa deals with, African drama differs from the drama of Europe in terms of the different modes of thinking. Ritualtheater such as that in Africa establishes the spatial medium not merely asa physical area for simulated events but as a manageable contraction of thecosmic envelope in which human beings exist. Ritual theater tries toreflect through physical and symbolic means the archetypal struggle of themortal being against external forces (Soyinka 41-43). These elements derive from traditional forms of African literature and havebeen adopted to the requirements of current writing in country aftercountry, mixing the traditional and the modern in ways uniquely African toproduce a literary tradition that has not yet achieved the quality desired. Thissense of ritual is essential to an understanding of the cathartic processesof the great tragedies. In different ways, theseworks repeat the communal process noted for African drama in which theprotagonist stands in for the entire community and purges evils from thecommunity through drama, poetry, and song: Such passages and their counterparts are essential to a sense of realistic health in the community; they embody, it should also be remembered, the conjurative aspects of nature-mysteries and the origin of the race. The very roots of the dramatic experience are tobe found in an affirmation of the communal self. Soyinka carriesthis idea through the book as he examines the nature of African drama andpoetry and the way the African writer expresses a certain culture and acertain world-view differently than do European writers. (41-43)These elements derive from traditional forms of African drama and have beenadopted to the requirements of current theater in country after country,mixing the traditional and the modern in ways uniquely African to produce atheatrical tradition that has not yet achieved the quality desired. Soyinka finds that much of the intellectualism in Africa isAfrocentric and fails to understand the Eurocentric view, just as Europeansfail to understand the true nature of Africa (136-137). There is an African sense of ritual and space that is very different. Ritual theater tries toreflect through physical and symbolic means the archetypal struggle of themortal being against external forces (41-43). Variations on the mixture of traditional and European dramaticelements have been repeated across the continent. Thissense of ritual is essential to an understanding of the cathartic processesof the great tragedies.
Common topics in this essay:
South Africa,
World Soyinka,
Africa Afrocentric,
Wole Soyinka,
ritual theater,
african literature,
entire community,
african drama,
drama poetry,
sense ritual,
theater africa,
traditional forms,
welfare individual inseparable,
confrontation forces act,
protagonist behalf community,
unvoiced fear,
protagonist survive,
forces act protagonist,
act protagonist behalf,
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