Perspectives on Wole Soyinka : freedom and complexity

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Title:

Author:

Jeyifo, Biodun, 1946-

ISBN:

9781578063352

9781578062614

Publication Information:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, c2001.

Physical Description:

xxii, 242 p. ; 24 cm.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Tradition and the Yoruba Writer -- D. O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, and -- Wole Soyinka 3 -- Abiola Irele -- Poetics and the Mythic Imagination 27 -- Stanley Macebuh -- The Fox's Dance -- The Staging of Soyinka's Plays 41 -- Annemarie Heywood -- The Complexity of Freedom SI -- Wilson Harris -- Being, the Will, and the Semantics of Death 62 -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. -- Blood and Wine -- Tragic Ritual from Aeschylus to Soyinka 77 -- Philip Brockbank -- Soyinka and His Radical Critics -- A Review 91 -- Brian Crow -- Wole Soyinka and the Tropes of Disalienation 104 -- Biodun Jeyfo -- Wole Soyinka and Heine Muller -- Different Cultural Contexts, Similar Approaches 128 -- Joachim Fiebach -- Periodic Embodiments -- A Ubiquitous Trope in African Men's Writing 140 -- Florence Stratton -- Myth, Literature, and the African World 157 -- Kwame Anthony Appiah -- Wole Soyinka and the Living Dramatist -- A Playwright's Encounter with the Drama of -- Wole Soyinka 172 -- Femi Osofisan -- Wole Soyinka and the Atunda Ideal -- A Reading of Soyinka's Poetry 187 -- Niyi Osundare -- The Space of Transformations -- Theory, Myth, and Ritual in the Work of -- Wole Soyinka 201 -- Ato Quayson.ic: Women.

Abstract:

"Nearly every major contemporary school of critical theory is represented here - from analytic philosophy to reconstructed Marxism, from poststructuralism to postcoloniality, and from feminism to recuperated phenomenology. This diversity of theoretical interests and interpretive approaches unites Soyinka's art with his political activism." "Gathered here in this collection, the essays simultaneously showcase Soyinka's postcolonial politics and his literary aestheticism. They reveal the irony that the downtrodden peoples whom Soyinka champions are those who cannot read his stirring books or see his compelling dramas." "This volume will afford Soyinka's readers a heightened sense of the wit, humor, and eloquence of this leading writer-activist of Africa and the English-speaking world."--BOOK JACKET.

Personal Subject:

Soyinka, Wole-Criticism and interpretation.

Geographic Term:

Nigeria -- In literature.

Added Author:

Jeyifo, Biodun, 1946-

Electronic Access:

Table of contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy022/00051334.html

Copies:

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Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168025426160	822.914 J59W 2001	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

This collection of the most significant and illuminating critical essays about the works of Wole Soyinka over the past three decades is evidence of the international esteem he has achieved. This Nobel Prize winner from Nigeria is arguably Africa's greatest living writer. His novels and plays are appreciated throughout the world. His works have attracted the attention of such acclaimed authors and critics as Wilson Harris, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Kwame Anthony Appiah, as well as such leading academicians as Philip Brockbank, Joachim Fiebach, Abiola Irele, Femi Osofisan, and Niyi Osundare. An essay by each of these is included in this volume. Nearly every major contemporary school of critical theory is represented here-from analytic philosophy to reconstructed Marxism, from poststructuralism to postcoloniality, and from feminism to recuperated phenomenology. This diversity of theoretical interests and interpretive approaches unites Soyinka's art with his political activism. Gathered here in this remarkable collection, the essays simultaneously showcase Soyinka's postcolonial politics and his literary aestheticism. They reveal the irony that the downtrodden peoples whom Soyinka champions are those who cannot read his stirring books or see his compelling dramas. Biodun Jeyifo was Soyinka's student, junior colleague, and even, Jeyifo says, his ""adversary in the ferocious intramural ideological debates within the community of African leftist writers, critics, and academics in the seventies and eighties."" ""This book,"" Jeyifo writes in his introduction, ""is the product of [an] extensive review of the scholarly aspects of the reception of Soyinka in the last three decades of his career as one of the most influential of writers of Africa."" This volume will afford Soyinka's readers a heightened sense of the wit, humor, and eloquence of this leading writer-activist of Africa and the English-speaking world. Biodun Jeyifo is a professor of English at Cornell University. He is the author of The Popular Traveling Theatre of Nigeria and The Truthful Lie.