Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism

by Biodun Jeyifo

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521110730
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/07/2009
Series:	Cambridge Studies in African and Caribbean Literature , #9
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Biodun Jeyifo is Professor of English at Cornell University. He is the author of The Popular Travelling Theatre of Nigeria (1984) and The Truthful Lie: Essays in a Radical Sociology of African Drama (1985). He has written essays and monographs on Anglophone African and Caribbean literatures, Marxist cultural theory and colonial and postcolonial studies and has also edited several volumes on African drama and critical discourse.

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.

Editorial Reviews

'… there are very few critics writing in the field who can carry out this kind of examination so well.' African Affairs

'… fascinating …' Wasafiri

From the Publisher