Breif Review of Wole Soyinka's Myth, Tragedy and the African World.
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A BREIF REVIEW OF WOLE SOYINKA’S MYTH, TRAGEDY AND THE AFRICAN WORLD.
EMMANUEL TOLULOPE FAGBURE
MATRIC NUMBER: 121232
© JUNE 2010.
Soyinka’s Myth, literature and the African world emerges as an intricate web of five essays of thoughts and opinions of one culture in response to another. In this review an attempt shall be made to look into the established metaphysical interconnectedness of history, ritual and drama and to assert the creative insight that permeates African world. In this discourse, lengthy discussions capable of distorting reason and confusing facts of discussion shall be deliberately avoided in favour of a brief and concise summary of views as discussed by the author.
The text is in a way a daring projection of a culture whose reference points are taken from within culture itself. Further study reveals the indepth of Soyinka’s thoughts on each posited subject. Morality and aesthetics in the ritual archetype uses Yoruba deities such as Ogun, Sango, Orisa-Nla and Esu to illustrate cosmic birth of the tragic in African experience, their profound parallel with the Greek gods and their Universal relevance. The area of difference is in pin pointed on grounds of profanity, injustice and wantonness of the Olympian gods in contrast with the ethics of the gods in Yoruba cosmogonic circles. The essence of tragedy to the Greeks according to Soyinka is embedded in Oedipus image. In the same breath he draws the lines between the Delphic oracle and the Yoruba divinatory chains showing not only how the modalities of each govern the norms of the professed society but also how they help to cement the cosmogonic gulf between man and the deities.
Drawing from The story of Oxala and that of Obotunde Ijimere the pseudonym of Ulli Beier titled The Imprisonment of Obatala, Soyinka analyses the points of departure from the Yoruba source in the former’s approach to the pure stoic essence of Obatala and his many sufferings. The works of Zeljian receives a...
EMMANUEL TOLULOPE FAGBURE
MATRIC NUMBER: 121232
© JUNE 2010.
Soyinka’s Myth, literature and the African world emerges as an intricate web of five essays of thoughts and opinions of one culture in response to another. In this review an attempt shall be made to look into the established metaphysical interconnectedness of history, ritual and drama and to assert the creative insight that permeates African world. In this discourse, lengthy discussions capable of distorting reason and confusing facts of discussion shall be deliberately avoided in favour of a brief and concise summary of views as discussed by the author.
The text is in a way a daring projection of a culture whose reference points are taken from within culture itself. Further study reveals the indepth of Soyinka’s thoughts on each posited subject. Morality and aesthetics in the ritual archetype uses Yoruba deities such as Ogun, Sango, Orisa-Nla and Esu to illustrate cosmic birth of the tragic in African experience, their profound parallel with the Greek gods and their Universal relevance. The area of difference is in pin pointed on grounds of profanity, injustice and wantonness of the Olympian gods in contrast with the ethics of the gods in Yoruba cosmogonic circles. The essence of tragedy to the Greeks according to Soyinka is embedded in Oedipus image. In the same breath he draws the lines between the Delphic oracle and the Yoruba divinatory chains showing not only how the modalities of each govern the norms of the professed society but also how they help to cement the cosmogonic gulf between man and the deities.
Drawing from The story of Oxala and that of Obotunde Ijimere the pseudonym of Ulli Beier titled The Imprisonment of Obatala, Soyinka analyses the points of departure from the Yoruba source in the former’s approach to the pure stoic essence of Obatala and his many sufferings. The works of Zeljian receives a...