'Unquestionably Africa''s most versatile writer and arguably one of her finest. When the Military decrees that a crime carrying a prison sentence now retroactively warrants summary execution, confusion and fear permeate a society where the brutality and injustice of military rule is parodied by life inside prison. Based on events in Nigeria in the early 1980s Wole Soyinka''s stage play From Zia with Love and radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, were produced in the early 90s when the writer was exiled by Sani Abacha''s notorious and unjust military regime.'
'Unquestionably Africa''s most versatile writer and arguably one of her finest. When the Military decrees that a crime carrying a prison sentence now retroactively warrants summary execution, confusion and fear permeate a society where the brutality and injustice of military rule is parodied by life inside prison. Based on events in Nigeria in the early 1980s Wole Soyinka''s stage play From Zia with Love and radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, were produced in the early 90s when the writer was exiled by Sani Abacha''s notorious and unjust military regime.'
This collection is dedicated to a distinguished scholar and writer who for a quarter of a century wrote consistently on African literature and the arts and was a major voice in Nigerian literary circles. Ezenwa-Ohaeto made a mark in contemporary Nigerian poetry by committing pidgin to written form and, by so doing, introducing different creative patterns. He also saw himself as a 'minstrel', as someone who wanted to read, express and enact his work before an audience. First and foremost, however, Ezenwa-Ohaeto was someone who 'un-masked' ideas and meanings hidden in the folds of literary works and made them available to an international academic public. With his outstanding work on Chinua Achebe, he influenced the reception of African literary biography. His networks and connections were extensive and wide-ranging, and they are partly reflected in the essays, creative writing and personal notes assembled in this volume. In their various modes and expressions, the contributions included here constitute a tribute to Ezenwa-Ohaeto's many talents and achievements. As an extension of Ezenwa-Ohaeto's legacy, they expand on various aspects of minstrelsy and the un/masking of texts in a Nigerian and broader African context. The book is divided into six sections. "In Memoriam" contains personal tributes by long-standing colleagues, mentors and friends. "Poetry and Fiction" collects the voices of three generations of Nigerian writing from the 1960s to the present day, followed by poetic and pictorial insights into the domestic and social life of the scholar and family man. Section Four comprises two interviews, while Sections Five and Six are devoted to critical evaluations of Ezenwa-Ohaeto's work and to contemporary perspectives on Nigerian literature respectively.
When Richard Steele remarked that the greatest Evils in human Society are such as no Law can come at, he was not able to forsee the spectacular success of John Gay's satire of society, the administration of law and crime, politics, the Italian opera and other topics. Gay's The Beggar's Opera, with its mixture of witty dialogue and popular songs, was imitated by 18th century writers, criticized by those on the seats of power, but remained a favourite of the English theatre public ever since. With N. Playfair's 1920 revival and B. Brecht's and K. Weill's 1928 Dreigroschenoper, Gay's play has been a starting-point for dramatists such as V. Havel (Zebrácká opera, 1975), W. Soyinka (Opera Wonyosi, 1977), Ch. Buarque (Ópera do Malandro, 1978), D. Fo (L'opera dello sghignazzo, 1981), A. Ayckbourn (A Chorus of Disapproval, 1984), as well as others such as Latouche, Hacks, Fassbinder, Dear, Wasserman, and Lepage. Apart from contributions by international scholars analysing the above-named plays, the editors' introduction covers other dramatists that have payed hommage to Gay. This interdisciplinary collection of essays is of particular interest for scholars working in the field of drama/theatre studies, the eighteenth century, contemporary drama, postcolonial studies, and politics and the stage.
Soyinka’s representation of postcolonial African identity is re-examined in the light of his major plays, novels and poetry to show how this writer’s idiom of cultural authenticity both embraces hybridity and defines itself as specific and particular. For Soyinka, such authenticity involves recovering tradition and inserting it in postcolonial modernity to facilitate transformative moral and political justice. The past can be both our enabling future and our nemesis. In a distinctive approach grounded in cultural studies, Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka locates the artist’s intellectual and political concerns within the broader field of postcolonial cultural theory, arguing that, although ostensibly distant from mainstream theory, Soyinka focuses on fundamental questions concerning international culture and political identity formations – the relationship between myth and history / tradition and modernity, and the unresolved tension between power as a force for good or evil. Soyinka’s treatment of the relationship between individual selfhood and the various framing social and collective identities, so the book argues, is yet another aspect linking his work to the broader intellectual currents of today. Thus, Soyinka’s vision is seen as central to contemporary efforts to grasp the nature of modernity. His works conceptualize identity in ways that promote and modify national perceptions of ‘Africanness’, rescuing them from the colonial and neocolonial logic of cultural denigration in a manner that fully acknowledges the cosmopolitan and global contexts of African postcolonial formation. Overall, what emerges from the present study is the conviction that, in Soyinka’s work, it is the capacity to assume personal and collective agency and the particular choices made by particular subjects at given historical moments that determine the trajectory of change and ultimately the nature of postcolonial existence itself. Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka is a major and imaginative contribution to the study of Wole Soyinka, African literature, and postcolonial cultural theory and one in which writing and creativity stand in fruitful symbiosis with the critical sense. It should appeal to Soyinka scholars, to students of African literature, and to anyone interested in postcolonial and cultural theory.
Within these interviews, Soyinka is forthright, clear and eloquent. He addresses many facets of his writing and plumbs pressing issues of culture, society and community.
Biodun Jeyifo examines the connections between the innovative and influential writings of Wole Soyinka and his radical political activism. Jeyifo carries out detailed analyses of Soyinka's most ambitious works, relating them to the controversies generated by Soyinka's use of literature and theatre for radical political purposes. He gives a fascinating account of the profound but paradoxical affinities and misgivings Soyinka has felt about the significance of the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. Jeyifo also explores Soyinka's works with regard to the impact on his artistic sensibilities of the pervasiveness of representational ambiguity and linguistic exuberance in Yoruba culture. The analyses and evaluations of this study are presented in the context of Soyinka's sustained engagement with the violence of collective experience in post-independence, postcolonial Africa and the developing world. No existing study of Soyinka's works and career has attempted such a systematic investigation of their complex relationship to politics.
