Wole Soyinka
Wole Soyinka
Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism
Biodun Jeyifo examines the relationship between the innovative and influential writings of Wole Soyinka and his radical political activism. Jeyifo analyzes Soyinka's most ambitious works, relating them to the controversies generated by his appropriation of literature and theater for radical political objectives. The evaluations of this study are presented in the context of Soyinka's sustained engagement with the collective experience of violence in post-independence, post-colonial Africa.
- Sheds light on the literary career of Wole Soyinka as it intersects with politics and collective identities in the developing world
- Investigates Soyinka's ambiguous relationship to forms of avant-garde representation in the twentieth century
- Will be of interest to African literature scholars as well as scholars of politics and literature
Reviews & endorsements
'… there are very few critics writing in the field who can carry out this kind of examination so well.' African Affairs
'… fascinating …' Wasafiri
Product details
December 2003Hardback
9780521394864
360 pages
216 × 140 × 24 mm
0.61kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Chronology
- 1. 'Representative' and unrepresentable modalities of the self: the Gnostic, worldly and radical humanism of Wole Soyinka
- 2. Tragic mythopoesis as postcolonial discourse - critical and theoretical writings
- 3. The 'drama of existence': sources and scope
- 4. Ritual, anti-ritual and the festival complex in Soyinka's dramatic parables
- 5. The ambiguous freight of visionary mythopoesis
- fictional and nonfictional prose works
- 6. Poetry, versification and the fractured burdens of commitment
- 7. 'Things fall together': Wole Soyinka in his own write.
