Wole Soyinka

Question 1

Death and the King’s Horseman DATE PUB

Answer 1

1975

Question 2

The Road DATE PUB

Answer 2

1965

Question 3

The world of drama quotes/ drama as ritual

Answer 3

• creates a “total communal experience” which is 2fold; representation of reality within the play + the collective consciousness of the audience who experience the same performance together – Myth, Literature, and the African World
• drama creates “a manageable construction of the cosmic envelope within which man… fearfully exists.” – Myth, Literature, and the African World
• “not merely as a physical area for simulated events but as a manageable contraction of the cosmic envelope”

Question 4

Race context

Answer 4

• Negritude; Aimé Césaire + Léopold Senghor
• “Why do you have to proclaim your Negritude – does the tiger proclaim its trigritude?” (criticises reactionary nature and lack of meaningful principles)
• Soyinka asks “whether humans can move beyond a national or local identity…and embrace the cultural content of difference.” – Carl Tighe

Question 5

Political Settings

Answer 5

The Road - “urbanisation without industrialisation” – Biodun Jeyifo

DATKH - colonial presence of Pilkings, houseboy Joseph converted to Christianity, Sargent Amusa’s alienation from tribe due to job with colonial police and called “a white man’s eunuch”

Question 6

Yoruba traditional beliefs

Answer 6

• Ogun, Yoruba god of war, destruction, societal collapse and regeneration
• “a Pan-Africanist social imaginary based on the recu- peration and revitalization of indigenous knowledge bases and traditions of pre-colonial Africa, is Wole Soyinka’s Myth, Literature, and the African World,” – Jeyifo Biodun

Question 7

Yoruba mythology textual quotes

Answer 7

TR - [Samson] “Kill us a dog before the hungry god lies in wait and makes a substitute of me”

DATKH - Elesin Oba as “failed Ogunian votary” - Ate Quayson

Question 8

Genre in The Road

Answer 8

• Masque genre; song and dance, associations to myth + symbol, play within a play
• Play within a play // Egungun performance + Drivers’ festival
• Drivers’ dirges throughout, not in English (displaces Western traditions that he evokes)
• Play ends with masks donnes whereas traditionally masques end with the players taking them off = ending in crisis

Question 9

genre in DATKH

Answer 9

Western Tragedy
- Hamartia – “powerful natural or cosmic influences [which] are internalised within the protagonists.”
- Chorus = Praise Singer + Iyaloja
–> Exposition through ritualistic dualogue with Praise Singer in opening scene (shows plot points + character)
–> Iyaloja acts as a representative for the Yoruba community in closing scene; “we/us”, “you have betrayed us”
- drumming during Pilkins’ tango scene