c

c 

Widely known, the history of Art has been entrenched with discriminatory
assumptions from the hegemonic Westerner critics regarding to what come to be
called the uncivilised societies such as African ones. The understanding one may
have of aesthetics from Western writers and philosophers such as Gobineau, Kant,
Hume, and Hegel seems to be valued as appropriate and applicable only to
Western culture. Aesthetics can de defined as ³a branch of philosophy dealing with
the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of
beauty.´But, according to African intellectuals such the Senegalese poet Leopold
Sedar Senghor, these ³Eurocentric scholars have drawn their theory from the
European aesthetics which is rooted from the remote Greek civilisation
characterized by a Hellenic rational philosophy named Logos´. In the aesthetic
perspective, this Eurocentric view of the negating image of African art is a reality
and was mostly conveyed through imperialist teachings in Europe and the other
countries of the Third world during the 1880s. Besides, Black people, who were
stereotyped as µprimitive beings¶, are thought unable to produce meaningful
aesthetic artefacts. This is highlighted through these words of the Senegalese
Secretary General of the Biennale AFRIC¶ART Ousseynou Wade: ³c





  





  


 


 
   ´In
other words, Ousseynou Wade depicts Western view on Black aesthetics as being
useless in so far as Africans are considered as uncivilised group of people.

Nevertheless, in the purpose of deconstructing racist assessment about the

unknown Negro art, African American intellectuals from the Diaspora launched
the movement Black aesthetics renaissance in the earlier 1950s. The origin of this
latter trend can be traced back in America where African slaves who were deported
to work in the Southern American plantations between the 15th and the late 18th
century. After the Civil War and the Reconstruction in 1880s, Black slaves who
were stereotyped as uncultured and unrefined human beings, succeed in gaining
more or less their social freedom. Despite the African American liberation from
works in the plantations, there is a yearn for cultural self- definition. In this
context, Black artists and intellectuals agreed on Black aesthetics rehabilitation
through the ³African-American ‘
‘ movement created in 1925. This
Negro trend spread throughout the world thanks to prominent Black American
writers such as Langston Hugh, Toni Morrison, Claude Mc Kay and the like.

This Black aesthetics has influenced many postcolonial and postmodernist

African artists, particularly writers such as the Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong¶o, the
Nigerians Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and others. Born Akinwande Oluwale
Soyinka in 1934, the artist and activist posits that writing and politics are
interwoven. Besides, Soyinka is very rooted in his Yoruba culture to which he was
very early initiated.´His parents balanced Christian training with regular visit to
the father¶s ancestral home in µIsara, a small Yoruba community secured in its
traditions.´ As a writer, his interest in Yoruba culture is visible in his being a
dramatist, essayist, poet and novelist. In his plays, this is marked by the presence
of Yoruba traditional songs, dances, themes, gods, and spirits. According to Eldred
Durosimi Jones, the writer¶s essay ³The Fourth Stage´ develops a theory of
Yoruba tragedy by examining the ideas underlying Yoruba theology.´In the
domain of sociology, Soyinka¶s traditional theory the ³Fourth stage´ can be
considered as a ³deep image´ because ³it links the physical world to the spiritual
world´. This deep image is mainly rooted in Yoruba tradition which the Yoruba
consider as the basis of a well organisation of their community which is threatened
by the influence of Western way of life.
 In fact, African intellectuals, in order to counter colonial discourses and
enhance Negro culture, decide to readapt the Negro creed ³Black Aesthetics´ in
African realities. In this respect, the Senegalese poet Léopold Sedar Senghor coins
in þ 
c
‘  

  
³African Negro Aesthetics´ which is an echo
of the Black aesthetic movement and whose main aim is to re-define and re-assess
the authenticity of African oral tradition. As for Soyinka, African Negro aesthetics
represented in Yoruba tradition through mainly ³sacred Oriki (praise-chants)´ is
much related to African philosophy. This latter which can be defined as Negro
metaphysic vision is generally performed through ritual dramatic materials such as
sculpture, painting, poetic arts and masquerade. However, these latter oral tools
started to be transmitted in literature through dramatic and novel forms by African
prominent writers.

Among post colonial writers one can cite the aforementioned Yoruba writer
Wole Soyinka. In fact, he painfully realizes that, while resisting colonialism new
elites start where the departing white colonialists had left off: the process of
cultural assimilation and political exploitation. Hence, he urges the African writers
to become the conscience of their nations. In order to affirm his rootedness on
Yoruba culture and political commitment he writes literary works such as the ritual
dramatic work 
 



 published in 1960 and the novel 

c  in 1965. In fact, Soyinka¶s literary output, generally, try to show the
essential function of Orature through the exploration of Yoruba mythology and its
ritual drama. In this respect, the interest of the survey is to describe the different
traditional artworks such as visual, poetic and performed used by Soyinka in 
and c. Besides, the survey of these artistic devices will permit to show social and
political impact on either on the characters or the audience.
 In , Soyinka depicts Yoruba belief which is transmitted through ritual
drama. Western conception of drama traces back ³tragic art and its connection to
history, three great moments: Aristotle; Hegel; Marx and Engels´. In nearly all
cultures drama can be traced to ceremonies connected with religious rite.
Soyinka¶s traditional theory is mainly based on Yoruba religious belief which is
much related to the notion of time. For the Yoruba, the notions of space, time and
traditional themes are linked and are characterized through the coexistence of past,
present and future generation. Hence, Soyinka mingles the triplet notion of time
(past, present and future) where each of the characters such as Demoke, Rola and
Adenebi, who uphold different social statuses, have to relive their bad and good
deeds with the enactment of ritual artworks such as poetry, sculpture, masquerade,
and the like.

This religious process is echoed as one of the concerns of the Yoruba

traditional theory the µFourth stage¶ which, according to Soyinka, can redeem the
individual and permits him to better master his destructive and creative powers.
The performer¶s resulting state of mind, after being experience self conscious
revision, which is the ability, for the characters, to control their binary opposite
force (destructive and creative) which is repetitive for all generations and races.

Soyinka¶s characters are modelled on the tremendous experience of Ogun,

the Promethean god of the Yoruba pantheon. In the play, the conflict of the binary
destructive and creative forces of human beings is represented through the carver
Demoke¶s sin because of his apprentice¶s murder and his ability to save the Half-
Child from Eshuoro¶s hands, the evil spirit. In the dramatic work, Soyinka
questions African remote, present and future dramatic socio-political experiences
symbolised through the tragedy of the Yoruba mythic figures such as Ogun, the
revolutionary and creative deity and human community¶s living people. For the
playwright, it is through this ritual enactment of self discovery that the human
being can be aware of his condition in order to better face socio-political problems.

c
is a satiric work about Nigeria postcolonial context where traditional

heritage and domestic policy are mismanaged due to Colonial influence. Satire is
defined in The 

 
þ !
   "
#   as a ³term applied to
any literary form, in poetry or prose, which ridicules a situation, an individual, or
an idea´ is very recurrent in Soyinka¶s  and c. Indeed, Yoruba traditional
morality is jeopardized by new elites¶ assimilation characterized by megalomania
and corruption. In this precarious socio-political context, the interpreters composed
of Nigerian young intellectuals such as Bandele, Sekoni, Egbo, Kola, and the like
try to make sense of their life. Hence, the characters Sekoni and Kola, sculptor and
painter, try to detach themselves from the unprogressed Nigerian society through
artworks confection. The skilful engineer Sekoni, disappointed because he is
judged by his corrupted staff unable to build the station power of the village, turns
to art particularly to sculpture, in order to relieve his frustration symbolised by his
frenzy wood masterpiece the ³Wrestler´. Besides, c is the portrayal of the
experience of a group of young Nigerian intellectuals who decide to get isolated
from the ignorant working class in order to interpret Nigerian social and political
realities. Hence, Soyinka considers the ³The Wrestler´ as an authentic African
Negro aesthetic artwork since it characterises the tragic and spiritual experiences of
the character Sekoni.

In this way, literary theories such as Marxism and Postmodernism favoured an

active political and cultural examination of the traditional role of the artist. The
latter, as a socially involved being, has to produce literary works critically
reflecting or criticizing African community values and vices. Soyinka, the
postmodernist writer, uses his literary trend as narrative structure to examine the
binary opposite forces (Ogun¶s destructive and creative forces). The latter inner
being is, according to Soyinka and the Yoruba traditional vision in general, the
result of traditional artworks enactment in ritual dramatic performance. In 

and c
Soyinka makes use of postmodernism which questions the principle of the
authenticity of Yoruba ritual drama and artworks.

African literature, including oral literature has been a means for African
writers to examine and affirm African cultural values and to resist to Eurocentric
hegemony on African society. In fact, while European views of literature often
stress on separation of art and content, African consider art as conscious-writing.
Black aesthetics is conveyed through oral literature by means of mythic or
historical texts, narrative epic, ritual verse and plastic arts such as sculpture and
painting in Soyinka¶s  and c. In þ 
c
‘  

  
Senghor
confirms, in these line, the authenticity and the re-awakening of African Negro
aesthetics:

The Twentieth century will remain that of African Negro

civilization discovery. First of all, in Negro society, it was the
sculpture that provoked scandal, then admiration. But, now
Europe begins to discover, step by step, tales, poetry, music,
painting, philosophy.

The purpose of this study is to analyse African Negro Aesthetics and its
social and political functions in Soyinka¶s  and c. Hence it will permit to
raise questionings that constitute the main parts of our survey. The first chapter is
devoted to Soyinka¶s characterization which is rooted in Yoruba mythology. The
second chapter displays the different traditional arts such as plastic arts, traditional
poetry and songs; and masquerade which Soyinka applied as narrative devices. In
the third chapter, we examine the thematic features of Soyinka¶s ritual drama and
mythology. It analyses the essential role of both the Yoruba artists and intellectuals
in postcolonial Nigeria. Finally, Western literary patterns and Yoruba language
influence are analysed in the fourth chapter. The answers of those interrogations
determine African aesthetics¶ repercussion in Western literary structure in 
and c. Besides, such a survey is an attempt to show the efficacy of African Negro
aesthetics characterized by the different traditional art forms in Soyinka¶s works.
Hybrid literary technique which makes Soyinka¶s works labelled hermetic will be
examined through language and imagery.






   
c
c 

This chapter reviews Soyinka¶s use of African Negro aesthetics in his

literary output. The Eurocentric depiction of black aesthetics is not favorable to the
way the Negro considered beauty. The first wave of aestheticians, mainly
composed of Westerners, did not describe Black aesthetics as functional but as
decorative. But, Soyinka deconstructs this negative conception through the
illustration of his traditional literary works such as  and c.
In the same way, Leopold Sedar Senghor remarks in þ 
c
‘  


   that ³
‘

  
  
 "


´. The
Senegalese poet refers ³Forces´ to the supernatural beings such as the Ancestors¶
spirits. This literary work encompasses thematic as well as aesthetic aspects of
Soyinka¶s concerns dealt with in his literary works. This is illustrated through the
sacred belief of the Yoruba human community regarding to the deities embodied
by Soyinka¶s ritual traditional theory, the ³Fourth stage´. The latter concern is
manifested literally through the Yoruba ritual enactment with traditional materials
such as songs, dance or carving and painting in Soyinka¶s 
and c.

Moreover, the critic William Harris displays in ³The Complexity of

Freedom´ the Yoruba mythological issue through the belief of a ³transition from
the human to the divine essence´ in Soyinka¶s works. In other words, he
emphasizes the primal essence of human beings inspired from Yoruba mythology.
In fact, the literary critic wants to show Soyinka¶s use of Yoruba mythic figures
through his archetypal characterization which is applied as narrative device.

Harris¶s arguments are relevant to our work because it permits to understand

the traditional hierarchy through the supernatural beings and living people
cohabitation which constitute one of African Negro Aesthetics¶ backgrounds.
Besides, he keeps on asserting that this traditional classification will ³




$ 
 

%
" 

 
´. Soyinka recourses, at
the outset of , to the narrative device called dramatic personae to show the
cohabitation between the metaphysic and human beings.

In 
 &


þ "
, Francoise Grellet accounts for dramatic
personae as the ³list of all the characters´ of a dramatic literary work. Yet, Soyinka
characters introduction in  hint this social hierarchy believed by many African
traditionalists. On the one hand, the play¶s dramatic personae consist principally of
the living characters such as Demoke, the carver and poet, Rola, the whore. On the
other hand, there are the forest dwellers composed mainly of the deities as Ogun,
Obaniji and the spirituals as the dead couple, Eshuoro, and the like. Soyinka¶s
works are generally marked by his traditional experience which is rooted in
African Negro Aesthetics.

Moreover, in relation to African Negro aesthetics, characterization in

Soyinka¶s works is very suggestive regarding to Yoruba traditional folklore. In c,
the painter Kola tries to identify his friends with the diverse µOrinsha¶ (deities) in
his pantheon. Through masquerade performance in , the characters¶ souls
communicate with spirits which possess their own soul, according to Soyinka.
That¶s why for Africans, the question of beauty is not luxury or artificial artworks
as they have been conceived by Westerners, but is functional through its religious,
communal and committed implication.

Characterization, defined in 



 
þ !
   "
as
³action or process of characterizing, especially the portrayals of human characters
in novels, plays...´is used by Soyinka in relation with the Yoruba notion of
cosmology which is very important regarding to Yoruba view of the genesis of the
world creation. In this regard, Soyinka specifies:

The drama of the hero god is a convenient expression; gods

they are identify by man as the role of an intermediary
quester, an explorer into territories of µessence ideal¶ around
whose edges man fearfully skirts.

The characters in Soyinka¶s literary works are traditionally conceived so that

to better make the Africans, particularly the Yoruba, identify themselves through
characters¶ behavior and characteristics. Among these characters we can mention
the god Ogun which is present both in  and c. The reflection of the Yoruba
Pantheon in Soyinka¶s works is illustrated in the way he moulds archetypal
characters as encompassing deities¶ characteristics and behavior. In other words,
characters¶ tremendous social experiences in  and c are paralleled to the
mythic tragedies of Yoruba deities, especially that of Ogun. Soyinka refers the
protagonists the most to the Prometheus sprit god Ogun. The latter is one of the
numerous gods which constitute the Yoruba pantheon where he seems to be the
most prominent because he dares to link the divine and the living people. In their
mythology, the Yoruba give him several attributes among which we can mention
the promethean spirit used by Soyinka in  and c.

In connection to Soyinka¶s characterization, Osundare draws parallelism

between some of the deities and his characters which are employed as archetypal
narrative devices. Besides, Osundare deals with the issue of the religious
connection between the Yoruba divine figures and the human community. Soyinka
posits that ³the reference to Yoruba gods is very essential in Yoruba religion´
which is one of the prominent aspects of African Negro Aesthetics.

In this context, the playwright¶s cosmic setting encompassing characters

and plot is divided into two worlds, according to Yoruba traditional beliefs: the
supernatural beings and the living people.

D  


The African traditional religious figures are mainly composed of deities,

spirits and the Dead. These metaphysic figures¶ characteristics differ from one
ethnic group to another though they share the same function which is mainly
religious. The essay þ




 

  
' by the
Senegalese essayist, Amade Faye, is a very relevant study about the characteristics
and function of Seerer mythology. For him, supernatural beings can play diverse
roles which lead them to be categorized as the good and harmful spirits as it is
highlighted through Amade Faye¶s words quoting L.V. Thomas: ³L.V. Thomas,
through an inquiry about African Negro eschatology underlines the complex stake
between spirits which are harmful and social forces.´ The spirits have been
conceived as the guardians of the world of dead people according to the African
traditional belief. In Soyinka¶s ["
þ  
 


 
(, the
spiritual beings lay guardians of the gulf which separates the divine beings from
the earth dwellers. Soyinka applies this concept in  and c to tackle with
postcolonial issues which constitute mainly the vanishment of local culture due to
the implimentation of colonial institutions and the social confrontation between the
corrupted new eiltes and the working class.

The supernatural beings are often located in natural environment such as the
dense forests which are mainly located in Central and West Africa. According to
African belief, especially to the Yoruba, the spirits are the reincarnation of some
souls which fail to cross the gulf of the dead people. They are believed by the
traditionalists to wander through rivers, water, rocks, forests and so forth. In c,
Egbo who is depicted by Soyinka as an alienated Yoruba at the outset of the novel,
become conscious of the presence of metaphysical beings's presence in the bridge,
next to the a lake where he stays alone to meditate about the decisions which he
has to take regarding to his corronation as the future king of his village.

Some of the supernatural beings do not bear human beings¶ presence in

their territories, that¶s why, the African fears quiet natural elements like forests,
lakes and the like. They are alleged to react against living people who dare to
profane their inhabitation. In , Soyinka divides the characters into the forest
dwellers and the living people. Among the forest dwellers there are Aroni, the
Lame One, Eshuoro, a wayward cult-spirit, and sprits of Palm, Darkness, etc. The
latter, mainly Eshuoro does not estimate Demoke, the woodcarver, because he is a
living people whose job is to destroy the forest through his action of carving. The
human community consists mainly of Demoke, a carver, Rola, a courtesan,
Adenibi, a council orator, who are summoned by the spirit Aroni to attend µThe
Gathering of the Tribes¶. The latter is a kind of ritual trial where the
initiated(Demoke, Adenebi and Rola) have to dance for ancestors who are
represented by the Dead man and the Dead woman. The act of dancing symbolises
the processus of self discovery of the different criminals composed mainly of
Demoke, Adenebi and Rola whose judgements are led by the Forest Head.
However, Aroni informs the reader at the outset of the play that ³it was not as
dignified a Dance as it should be´ (, 2) because the dead couple are invited to
the gathering of the tribes to tell human beings¶ past crimes which are represented
through the past criminal deeds of Demoke, Rola and Adenebi.

Moreover, Eshuoro which is a disciple to Oro, the chief spirit of the trees,
considers the ritual meeting in the Forests as disrespectful in so far as there is the
presence of Demoke the woodcarver whose alleged work is to destroy the nature.
Through this mythic allegory, Soyinka analyses the destructive feature of the living
people regarding to resourceful nature which is represented through the characters
as Oro, Eshuoro, and Murete. The latter that is a tree demon, knows all activities
which occur in the woodland. Demoke¶s carving of the totem, which is made up
from the trunk of a tree, is denounced through Eshuoro¶s words as blasphemous:

Eshuoro: The totem, blind fool, drunk fool, insensitive fool.

The totem, my final insult. The final taunt from the human

Pigs. The tree that is marked down for Oro, the tree from
which my followers fell to his death, foully or by accident,

I have still to discover when we meet at the next wailing.

But my body was stripped by the impious hands of Demoke,

Ogun¶s favoured slave of the forge. My head was hacked of
by his axe. Trampled, sweated on, bled on, my body¶s shame
pointed at the sky by the adze of Demoke, will
 I let this day pass without vengeance claimed blood for sap?
(, 48).

Soyinka examines the issue of deforestation which the human beings are
directly or indirectly the agents of. Though, woodcarving is considered by the
Yoruba as embodying religious concerns in so far as it often represents their
divinities. Although woodcarving has religious interest to the Yoruba, one may not
forget the importance of the nature survival which is threatened by deforestation.
This shows that Soyinka¶s works do not only depicts the important role that oral
tradition play, but they also question human beings¶ perilous enterprises regarding
to the nature.

Besides, these lines account for the crime of Demoke who makes fall
Oremole, Oro¶s discipline, from the tree they were carving because of envy.
Demoke, who is considered as the most skillful sculptor of the city, could not bear
Oremole being beyond him while they were carving the totem. Then, he kills
Oremole by making fall his apprentice down of the totem. The carver is summoned
by the Forest Head to recognize his fault. Demoke¶s self discovery is portrayed by
Soyinka through the performance of masquerade in which the masquerader is
possessed by his past offense. Soyinka makes use of masquerade as narrative
device to deal with social issues such as self-consciousness.

The African believes metaphysical forces which are part of every day
activities. They are represented mainly through animals and natural elements
which are called totem. Soyinka¶s works reflect the most these traditional items
which are rooted in Yoruba mythology.

However, Yoruba deities are more present in Soyinka¶s works through the
most visible one that is Ogun, the protector of the artists. He is the most visible
deity representing the tragedy of the Yoruba Pantheon. In their mythology, the
Yoruba give him several attributes; some of them are present in  and c
In
Yoruba mythology, the gods and man were formerly separated by a void known as
³abyss of transition.´Characters such as Demoke, Sekoni and Kola, to fulfill their
religious gap recourse to plastic arts mainly sculpture and painting to feel
themselves close to the deities.

Ogun is the only god in the Pantheon who dares to affront hostile forces in
order to unite his fellow gods with man despite the suffering awaiting him. In
Western culture, it is generally known through Prometheus, a figure in Greek
mythology. He is famous for the sacrifice he made in favour of mankind through
his rebellious act against Zeus. To grasp Ogun¶s Promethean spirit, it is crucial to
set it in its context. For the Yoruba, the divine and human communities are
separated by a void known as ³abyss of transition´ which has to be diminished
through social demands. There is a social requirement which urges the living
people to call for ancestors or deities through ritual enactments.

The Yoruba needs to unite with the deities to recover Orisa nla¶s
µcomplementary.¶ The Yoruba believe that the world was created by Oludumare
who was their supreme deity. As Soyinka says in ["
þ  
 


 

(, Orisa-nla (Obatala) is at the core of the Yoruba pantheon which is made of
one hundred and one gods. He was attacked by his rebellious slave, Atunda who
threw him a boulder. Consequently, he became fragmented and each fragment
turned into deity. This complementary is mirrored in the gods¶ ability to merge
both human and divine natures. In Soyinka¶s view, the abyss of transition is
inhabited by forces which are hostile to its crossing. Ogun is the only god in the
pantheon who dares challenge them in order to unite his fellow gods with man
notwithstanding the sufferings awaiting him. It is from this rebelling act that he
becomes the archetype of the promethean sprit in Yoruba mythology.
 In , this notion of connection between the Yoruba gods and the human
community is represented through the ³Gathering of Tribes´, though consisting in
³«the kind of action that redeem mankind´(, 7) it represents also unification
between the world of the living, the deity, and the ancestors. It symbolizes the
µFourth Stage¶ where Demoke, Rola, and Adenibi have to cross through traditional
art forms such as masquerade, dance and songs. At the same time, it expresses the
celebration of the glorious past represented through African historical empires
famous deeds. It is highlighted through these lines:

Adenibi: («) Find the scattered sons of our

proud ancestors. The builders of empires.

(«) Let them be our historical link for the season of

rejoicing. Warriors. Sages. Conquerors.

Philosophers. Mystics. (, 32)

In c, Ogun, the Yoruba god of the artists, is embodied by Sekoni; it is

impelled by his desire to construct infrastructures which will improve the lot of his
people. Through Sekoni¶s power of creativity, there is the intervention of Ogun
which is Sekoni¶s guide in his project. His upheavals against the cancellation of
Ijioha village¶s power station by the corrupted boss. His release is shown in the
description the narrator gives of the carving ³The Wrestler´:

Taut sinews nearly agonizing in excess tension a bunched

python caught at the instant of easing out, the balance of
strangulation before release, it was all elasticity and strain.
(c, 99)
 Besides, in , there is character such as the carver Demoke who
incarnates Ogun¶s revolting power through the carving of ³araba tree´ (, 28),
hence, Ogun stands for the god of the artists. This is illustrated through his safety
deed to Demoke who was falling from the high of the Oro¶s tree which he was
carving.

In African traditional society, the ancestors or the dead people occupy a high
religious rank albeit there are no longer alive. µDeath¶ which is defined in 



 
þ !
   " as the ³cessation of all life processes´,
embodies mythic concerns of the cohabitation between the world of the living and
dead people in the African psyche. The Yoruba writer Amos Tutuola deals with the
mythic concerns the most through his essays such as 
)
( 
 &. For
Tutuola ³old people were saying that the whole people who had died in this world
did not go to heaven directly, but they were living in one place somewhere in this
world´. The Yoruba spiritual belief about the supernatural being¶s common
dwelling with the earthly creatures plays socio political functions. Soyinka¶s uses
these mythic figures in his works to examine postcolonial Nigerian issues. The
mythic archetypal characters are very recurrent in Soyinka¶s  and c.

In the play, Soyinka adopts mortal archetypal protagonist such as dead man
and woman who are summoned by the sprit Aroni, the Lame One, to attend the
ritual meeting the ³Gathering of the Tribes´. Soyinka depicts the essential presence
of The Dead Man and The Dead Woman in the ritual reunion through the voice of
Aroni: ³I know who the Dead Ones are. They are the guests of the Human
Community who are neighbours to us of the forest. It is their feast, the Gathering
of the Tribes.´(,1). Aroni, the storyteller of the feast process, portrays it as the
gathering of the different worlds of existence such the living people, the spirits and
the unborn. The choice of the dead people as hosts in the µdance of the forests¶, is
not fortuitous. In fact, they are summoned by The Forest Head to plead on the
behalf of the living people. The use of death as narrative technique in Soyinka¶s
work is also noticed in c.

Likewise in novel, Sekoni, though he has been killed in an accident in the

Second Part of the novel, seems to be present in the memory of his friends namely
Kola, Bandele, Egbo and the like. The spectral presence of the dead people in the
mind of the characters is very meaningful in African Negro literature. In  " 


* 
+&

þ

 ,
*   "

+, Philip Tage accounts for
the use of departed people in literary works play narrative functions such as the
African fragmented way of telling stories.

+, written by the African American Toni Morrison, deal with Sethe¶s
traumatic experience meaning the murder of her own daughter Beloved whom she
did not want to give back to the slaveholder. As the novel unfolds, she encounters
the ghost of Beloved whom wants to wreck havoc on her. For Morrison as for
Soyinka it is important for the African American writers to take into account oral
tradition which encompass African collective consciousness. In this regard Tage
asserts:

The thematic and formal power of Beloved is evident in the

patterns of circularity in the novel and in the related issues of
revival, storytelling and listening, and overlapping
consciousness.

The summoning of dead figures is used in Soyinka¶s  and c
as

narrative devices to emphasis on African Negro aesthetics. In ³Soyinka¶s Ritual
Drama: Unity, Postmodernism, and the Mistake of the Intellect´, William S. Haney
II depicts the importance of immortal characters¶ adoption in Soyinka¶s works. In
, Soyinka¶s use of the ³two obscure spirits of the restless dead´ is to represent
³the coexistence of opposites such as mortality and immortality´. For William S.
Haney, The Dead man and the Dead woman characterize ³the no changing,
unmanifest field of pure conscious, which is the source of all historical change
because it is a field of infinite dynamism´.

Furthermore, the African oral tradition, especially the Yoruba spiritual belief
about the supernatural beings cohabitation with the human community is mainly on
African psyche and play and important socio-political roles. For the Yoruba, the
world of metaphysical beings is not only composed of the dead people but there
are also spirits consist of the ghost and good spiritual creatures. They inhabit
cosmic areas as the dead people who ³are the one who have died before their
time and so can live with the ageless spirits.´ For Tutuola, the spirits and the ghosts
can be defined as the aborted unborn children who can be very harmful for the
human community if they do not fulfill social demand such as ritual sacrifice.

This spiritual belief is very recurrent in every African traditional society

such as the Seerer one. In fact, the Seerer, an ethnic group located in Senegal, ³is
conscious that his surroundings are infested with the competition of some harmful
factors, a place of any kind of deadly plight´.

Soyinka¶s  encompasses these alleged harmful creatures used as

narrative devices. They are represented through the character Eshuoro, and his
jesters whose main objective is to have revenge on Demoke, Ogun¶s servant. The
latter, not only he has killed Eshuoro¶s disciple Oremole, but also he dares to carve
Eshuoro¶s sacred tree: Oro.

On the other hand, there are metaphysical beings which work on the behalf
of human being¶s progress and for their self-consciousness rehabilitation. These
spiritual beings exorcise the living people who is possessed or the one who is
threatened by wicked spirits. This spiritual antagonism is determined by Amade
Faye through these words: ³In the edge of the tenebrous existential universe, there
are also good and protector agents who stand in order to counter the malevolent
forces.´

In Soyinka¶s , these protector forces are represented Ogun and the
Forests Head. As the god defender of the artists, the smiths and carvers in ["

þ  
 


 
(, Ogun stands for the guardian of Demoke whom
he has been searching in the forests in order to protect him from Eshuoro. On the
other hand, there is the Forest Head who has called for the µGathering of the
Tribes¶ to help Rola, Demoke and Adenibi in their self-recovery through ritual
performance. The three living characters have committed obscenities in their
previous life in Mata Kharibu¶s court. For their self-rehabilitation, the Forest Head
uses performing arts such masquerade which make the performer be in connection
with his inner state of mind.

The dialectical confrontation characterized through supernatural conflict in

, and the antagonist social classes in c symbolize postcolonial Nigerian. The
analysis of social class conflict is essential for the Marxists, because they think
revolution alternative can only be achieved through the resistance of the working
class.

Besides, the novel¶s and the play¶s characters are one of the human
community representatives in Soyinka¶s literary output.

D D
 !


The authentic Negro has always needed to be reconciled with his ancestors
through rites of passages. He identifies himself to his deities he worships in the
purpose to justify daily deeds. This part will deal with Soyinka¶s characters as
deity models .In this respect, the living people has to experience self-discovery,
which is achieved the performance of Yoruba different art forms. The latter used as
tragic and dramatic narrative technique, are very recurrent in Soyinka¶s works. In
this context, he applies the ³abyss of transition´ as referring to tremendous
experience which the protagonists in  like the carver Demoke has to encounter
for his self realization.


is ritual drama in that it combines issues such as the conflict between
the values of the old society and the new one and the role the artist in relation to
his traditional heritage. Thus for Soyinka, the Yoruba incarnates particular deity¶s
power either it is creative or destructive, has to know to better handle them in order
to make sense of his life. Demoke, whose power is endowed by the creative god
Ogun, is aware of his destructive power and is propelled toward redemption in
Soyinka¶s . Therefore, Demoke stands for the hope that the Nigerians were
expecting to change Nigerian socio-political hardships.

In c, Egbo also incarnates Ogun¶s character mainly his darker aspect. His
personality is shaped in relation to the god¶s violent nature and his lack of
compassion. This is illustrated by the sudden violence which takes holds of him in
the nightclub and which ends in a fight against a waiter (c, 219) and his repulsive
behavior towards Joe Golder after Noah¶s death:

As from vileness below human imagining Egbo snatched his

hand away, his face distorted with revulsion and a sense of
the degrading contamination. He threw himself forward,
away even from the back seat, staring into the sagging figure
at the back as at some noxious insect, and he felt his entire
body crawl in disgust. His hand which had touched Joe
 Golder suddenly felt foreign to his body and he got out of the
car and wiped it on grass dew. (c, 236)

In , Demoke represents a µslave¶ of Ogun in so far as the latter is the

patron god of the artists. Moreover, Ogun¶ darker and humanitarian aspects is
shown through the woodcarver¶s deeds. On the one hand, he commits crime by
plucking his apprentice down because he was jealous, on the other hand, he gains
salvation because he succeed in saving the Half-Child.(, 77)

Furthermore, as for Kola and Sagoe, they are respectively built around
Ogun¶s and Esu¶s personalities. As far as Kola is concerned, this is noticeable
through his status as a professor of art and his artistic creation that is, the painting
of the Yoruba pantheon. In this, he reflects Ogun¶s artistic and creative trend.
Concerning Sagoe, he reflects Ogun¶s drinking propensity, for many a time,
Soyinka presents to the reader a drunk Sagoe ready to provoke trouble. Likewise,
he symbolizes Esu¶s trickster nature. This resemblance is related to the numerous
tricks he plays to such people as the Oguazors and Pinkshore.

However, Bandele appears as a developing protagonist. His personality and

his attitudes towards his friends are no longer the same. In the words of Maduakor,
as the novel approaches its end, he takes the religious course over Sekoni and
Lazarus. These marks of Bandele are worth the behavior of the supreme God Orisa
nla. This is more plausible because supreme deities are required to be the role
models, to lead their subordinates on the right track. As Obi Maduakor says
Bandele ³is almost a god among men, a Jupiter hurling a verbal hammer of
reprimands against those who have offended against the moral law´
 As for Bandele¶s characters portrayal, Obaniji in  plays the same
humanitarian role in so far as he summons Demoke, Rola and Adenibi to be
purified through ritual performing. For the critic William S. Haney ³Obaniji is not
only the Forest Head; he is also a mortal´ hence ³he synthesis mortality and
immortality´. He plays a humanitarian role regarding to the living people as Rola,
Demoke and Adenebi who experienced sinful deeds in their past in the court of
Mata Kharibu.

Next to these characters that are modeled after the Yoruba deities, there is
other who symbolizes corruption in c and  in a satirical way. This is the case
of the authorities of the newspaper The Independent Viewpoint: Sir Derinola,
Chief Winsala, and the Managing Director. This character portrayal will permit to
show the political functions of Soyinka¶s use of mythic figures mirrored to the
living people.

The satirical image of Sir Derinola is visible in Sagoe¶s daydream where he

appears totally ³naked except for a pair of Dehinwa¶s brassieres over his chest´
(c, 64) .The brassieres represent the medals he receives during his decoration by
the Queen. According to Jones in The Writing of Wole Soyinka, ³the incongruity
of the medals against the nakedness of Sir Derinola is a physical image of his
unfitness for the honor that the medals imply´. There is an incompatibility between
Derinola status as a judge and his involvement in corruption. As a respectable
judge whose job should be to sentence those who have infringed the law, Derinola
³is not above taking petty bribes, hiding behind the more obviously corrupt front of
the crooked Chief Winsala´.

Winsala¶s bent on the bribery leads him to hold up to ridicule; he gets

humiliated by a mere waiter who threatens to beat him for the extra drink he fails
to pay. As if to worsen thing, his ridiculous position reaches its peaks with Jone¶s
comments: ³it is in the traditional way that Winsala mirrors his position to himself
and implicitly reproves himself for thus exposing himself«´

The Managing Directories is an extravagant man who spends all his time
travelling and buying appliances. This aspect of his personality is satirically
portrayed through his trip to Germany which is qualified as ³his eleventh round the
world mission´ (c, 75) but also through the purchase of the radiogram. He buys it
only because ³it has class´ or to be more accurate because ³it has nine winking
lights all differently colored, although no one had yet discovered what they
proved.´(c 75)

In , satirical portrayal of characters is very recurrent mainly through the

subjects of Mata Kharibu¶s court composed of the Soothsayer, an oracle, The
Physician, the Slave dealer, the Historian, and the like. The Soothsayer helps Mata
Kharibu to know his future projects among which his plane to wage war against
another feeble realm. The slave dealer, in the purpose to rent his small boat to Mata
Kharibu, corrupts the Historian in order the latter to testify the boat is enough large
to contain full passengers. The Historian agreement after taking the bribe is
highlighted through these lines:

Historian: That is fact. Mata Kharibu and all his ancestors

would be proud to ride in such a boat. (, 61)

The corrupted Historian symbolizes the new elite¶s bad ruling by taking
decision without giving priority to the tremendous social condition of his subjects.
Postcolonial Nigeria has been the setting of policy mismanagement characterized
through corruption, oppression, victimization, and the like. Consequently, the mass
undergoes perilous experiences because they are exploited by the bureaucrats who
are symbolized by Mata Kharibu and his ministers. Soyinka, in his works,
examines political issues through the revision of historical events.  constitutes
a relevant case to the politicians¶ economic misconduct in postcolonial Nigeria.

Next to the divine and satirical portrayal of Soyinka¶s characters, there are
female ones. Black woman has been considered as one of African Negro
aesthetics¶ representation. Though one may thing that they do not play important
role in African society, Soyinka portrays female characters in a particular way.
Usually, their depiction in African novels written by men tends to reinforce male
domination. In ³The Awakening of Self in the Heroines of Ousmane Sembene´
Sonia Lee writes that ³the feminine protagonists throughout the African novels
present certain homogeneity of character which can be attributed to a basic
similarity in the man¶s view of the woman.´ This type of character-portrayal is
found in Soyinka¶s plays: 
þ 
 

-
and 
 

. !

 respectively with women characters like Sidi and the unnamed virgin
bride of Elesin who are both victims of male dominated society.

In  and c, Soyinka presents another type of female character portrayal
aiming at idealizing them. Unlike men who are mostly characterized in relation to
their experiences but also to the Yoruba deities, women are portrayed in relation to
their physical appearance; they incarnate extraordinary beauty. In c, we have
Simi, Egbo¶s girlfriend whose exceptional beauty reaches a mythical dimension
and has also a dangerous effect. This is illustrated by her association with the
figure of Mammy Watta, ³the mythological siren who lures men to their death with
an alluring beauty´. Always in relation to Simi¶s beauty and its harmful effect,
Boyce Davies observes that Soyinka resorts to animal images to highlight it. Simi
is the ³Queen ±Bee (c, 51) for whom men must dance and play the fool; she is a
snake (c, 53). Even the musicality of her name suggests beauty.

Rola is Simi¶s counterpart in , like her, she is characterized by her

extraordinary beauty. In the play, the characters such as Demoke, Adenibi and
Rola go forth and back from they present life to the past. Rola is a whore who lures
men to achieve her futile purposes. She embodied the same fatal nature but under
the name of Madame Tortoise, the queen of Mata Kharibu¶s court. As incarnating
Rola, two of her suitors killed each other because each of them wanted to be her
husband. It is illustrated through Adenebi¶s remark on Rola¶s beauty¶s
consequences: ³«Two lovers in the graveyard. And the sordidness of it. The
whole horrible scandal. How did I ever get in your company?´(, 22).

In
c, black beauty is also expressed through Owolebi, the traditional dancer
of the bar where the group of friends has been meeting. The interpreters composed
of Sekoni, Kola, Bandele, Dehinwa, and the like have the habit to gather to the bar
to share their daily experience. There, they witness the performance of the dancer
whose beauty is differently conceived by the interpreters.

The depiction of women as the symbol of beauty but also as a femme fatale
is present in Soyinka¶s Kongi¶s Harvest with Segi. Oba Danlola¶s words to Daodu
are illustrative:

A-ah, you¶ve picked yourself

A right cannibal of the female species.

Daodu, that woman of yours, she scares

The pepper right up the nostrils

Of your old man here. She has left victims

On her path like sugarcane pulp

 Squeezed dry

Soyinka¶s woman characters will help us to deal with repressive power

represented by Madame Tortoise and black woman¶s beauty symbolized by
Owolebi, the traditional dancer.

The analysis of the portrayal characters in Soyinka¶s  and c has

displayed the characters as a deity¶s creativity and destructive models. The latter
tendency is mainly embodied through characters such as The Historian. The
satirical character portrayal will permit to deal with dialectical Marxism between
the new elites and the middle class in Soyinka¶s both works.

Moreover, the supernatural beings and the human community are therefore
very meaningful in Soyinka¶s 
and c. The gulf which separates the deities
and the living people represented through Soyinka¶s ³abyss of transition´ is
expressed through elements of African Negro aesthetics, especially the use of
Yoruba ritual artworks as narrative devices.


 



D 
c""
"#" 

 c
c  

 In African society, these artistic creations uphold religious functions defined

as ³religious art´. Tribal art meaning art and craft produced by indigenous natives
from tribal societies in Africa is much more sacred than Western art. Black
aesthetics, which often refers to traditional art, is composed of different artworks
such as visual, poetic and performing arts. African art has very different functions
from that of European or Western culture. Because of the hermetic nature of tribal
art, the European art theorists consider it as useless and merely primitive.

Concerning African aesthetics, individual images are representatives, at

times even embodiments of the vital forces believed to exist in all living issue.
Often these images speak for the spirits of the dead, thus perpetuating the vital
essence of ancestry. Consequently, tribal art symbolize the spirit of a force which
is frequently divine and ancestral.

In  and c, Soyinka does not limit himself to these transcendental
portrayals of characters. He depicts the diverse traditional materials in respect with
their different genres. The latter are mainly composed of visual, poetic, music and
performing arts. In the play, the three living people such as Demoke, Rola and
Adenebi were reliving their criminal spirits through the performance of
masquerade in order to gain salvation. The case of possessed spirits characters in
c can be highlighted through the dancer in the bar where the young intellectuals
have to meet each night.

Although there is a secular aspect to most of the artwork, they also are
purely decorative or ornamental as in the Oguazor¶s house with its artificial
flowers (c
198). African tribal art is considered as purely religious art. This latter
which is represented through plastic art and performing arts such as woodcarving
and masquerade ³embodied the vital forces believed to exist in all living matter´.
Sometimes these images represented the spirits of the dead, the vital essence of
tribal ancestry. It is occasionally performed through traditional ceremonies.
Besides, the visual art such as masks, figurines, musical instrument mainly drums
also are among tribal artworks. In African ritual performance, the use of musical
instruments as the drum has been very essential because it accompanies traditional
enactment.

Unfortunately many such artworks have disappeared with the arrival of

white explorers. During the colonial period, colonizers bring not only there
political system but also apply their way of living in African. They built
infrastructures as modeled to those located in European societies. Many African
writers such as Soyinka depict Western buildings such as luxurious domicile as
aesthetically meaningless. This aesthetic perspective appears in c where Sagoe,
the journalist, considers the Oguazors¶ comfortable domicile, where a party is
organized, as a ³house of death where brains where petrified´ (c, 148). The
Oguazors, a high ranking family, have their house ornamented with ³artificial
apples´ in the occasion of the party which takes place there. Sagoe has a critic
view on the role of Western aesthetics in African societies. It is highlighted
through he¶s words: ³What on earth does anyone in the country want with plastic
fruits´ (c, 140). Plastic fruits symbolize futile artworks in so far as it do not play
religious role as it is case for African Negro aesthetics composed mainly of
painting, sculpture, songs, and masquerade.

In European exhibition, Africa masks are typically shown emotionally and

physically motionless, but their true context is their performance rhythmic with
musical tone in dance. This latter enactment is called masquerade which performer
is momentarily possessed by a spirit. Soyinka often uses the ³mask motif´ to depict
the characters¶ state of mind or mood. When the spirit speaks through the mask
dancer, it is as if he became its mouthpiece. This fact is highlighted through Rola,
while she is possessed momentarily by past experience which is characterized by
her offense through the use of her beauty to harm peoples.

A good deal of tribal art such as rites has been transmitted from generation
to generation through the use of traditional artworks. Each African society
possesses its own emblems and ritual motifs which often symbolize gods a deities
such as it is the case of Ogun the god of creativity and destructiveness. The Yoruba
tribe in Nigeria is mainly composed of skilful carvers of sacred figurines
differently and upholds different social status within their community.

As Soyinka emphasizes in ["
þ  
 



 
(, Ogun
stands for the world of art: craft, song, and artistic creativity. Art is indicative of
Ogun¶s presence in  and c. In other words, the presence of Ogun in Soyinka¶s
works implies the presence of an artist. The latter can be a blacksmith, a hunter, a
poet or a sculptor. In the play, artistic creativity plays a role of fulfillment through
Demoke¶s carving the totem; through Sekoni¶s woodcarving, the Wrestler and
Kola¶s panting the Yoruba pantheon.

Osofian¶s article helps to highlight the different traditional narrative devices

such as dance, dirge songs and masquerades used by Soyinka.
However, we opt
for a deep analysis of Yoruba traditional visual, music, poetic and performing arts
in relation with their religious, communal and committed aims, more detailed by
Soyinka in the dramatic work .

D $ 

As it name suggests, visual arts are the whole artworks composed mainly of
sculpture and painting. One of the striking illustrations in  and c are Demoke
and Sekoni¶s carving and Kola¶s painting the Pantheon of Yoruba deities.
Soyinka¶s use of visual arts composed mainly of woodcarving and painting is to
express the characters¶ feelings and beliefs which are mythic and political.

Plastic arts have different a meaning regarding to the European sculpture and
painting. In ["
þ  
 


 
(, Soyinka portrays European
artworks as representing individual feeling rather than collective one which is
much noticed in African Negro aesthetics. According to Senghor, Cesaire and
Soyinka Black aesthetics mainly painting and woodcarving symbolize collective
ideology and vision.

In Yoruba traditional society, the woodcarver is considered as a priest

because their religious belief is represented through mask, statutes and the like.
Moreover, the craft of carving has been transmitted through generations from
father to son as it is the case for the oral tradition characterized by the griots. The
Yoruba carver upholds an important social rank in so far as his artworks are
believed in as the µshrine¶ (totem or deity¶s inhabitation) of one Yoruba given cast.

The essential role of the carver is portrayed in Soyinka¶s , through the
attendants¶ consideration of the beautiful totem carved by Demoke. In c, Sekoni
whose prior profession is engineer, turn to sculpture to concretize his religious
believe of the link between the divine and earthily beings. Besides, Soyinka¶s use
of plastic arts suggest affective characteristics of Yoruba beauty defined in [",
as the ³sublime aesthetic joy´ symbolized mainly by Sekoni¶s woodcarving, ³The
Wrestler´.

Through the use of visual arts as narrative devices, Soyinka wants to show
the socio-political commitment and religious functions of Yoruba traditional arts.
On the one hand, visual art is represented, in the play, through Demoke¶s totem
which embodies Madame Tortoise¶s vulgarity and obscenities (, 28). On the
other hand, Yoruba art forms have to symbolize ³the sublime aesthetic joy´ which
is pure expression of the artist¶s sensuality while crossing the ³abyss of transition´.

This African sensitivity expressed trough artworks has been echoed by

Etienne Soriau as ³the Angel of the Work´ which is one of the Western way of
interpreting aesthetics. Quoting again Etienne Soriau, Gilbert Durant considers
visual art as symbolically significance in so far as it reflects metaphysical contents.
This latter Western vision of art is mainly represented through European artistic
trends such as Baroque, Cubism, and the like. By contrast, for the Yoruba poet, the
sublime aesthetic joy is a kind of feeling which permits the artist to produce
masterpieces. That is why in c and , this sensation is purely mythic because it
is the representation of the link between the worlds of the living, the unborn and
the dead. In other words, according to Soyinka, Sekoni¶s sculpture is more
authentic regarding to Kola¶s Pantheon in so far as the latter does not express
sensual feeling but is a parallelism of living people and deities¶ resemblances.

Which may urge Kola to realize he is not an artist in so far as he does not
succeed in fulfilling his sublime aesthetics of joy¶s experience through painting,
asserts: ³I¶m not really an artist. I never set out to be one. But I understand the
nature of art and so I make an excellent teacher of art´ (c 227). The fact of being
an authentic traditional artist does not reside through Western technique of art, but
is ontologically rooted in African psyche.

Visual art also uphold political concerns which deal with postcolonial issues
mainly in Soyinka¶s . In the play, which is allegory representing Nigerian post
independence, depicts the social class confrontation between the new elites and the
working class. For this purpose Soyinka revises African historical context which
was mainly linked with the tyrannical ruling of some monarchs characterized
through the court of Mata Kharibu. Madame Tortoise, Mata Kharibu wife, who
often has secret romantic relation with her subjects as Demoke, the court poet and
the Warrior whom she attracts to make them do perilous tasks. She stresses on her
power while addressing to the Warrior:

Madame Tortoise: What are you? Men have killed for me.

Men have died for me. Have you flints in your eyes? Fool,
have you never lived?( , 64)

Demoke¶s woodcarving, the totem symbolizes, on the one hand the

unification of the Yoruba cosmogony characterized by the world of the unborn, the
living and dead people. On the other hand, the totem expresses submission which
her subjects are victim of. Soyinka has succeed in incorporating visual arts mainly
woodcarving as narrative device to hint postcolonial issues such as dialectical
confrontation between the privileged social class and the mass.

Through the sculpture µThe Wrestler¶, Sekoni liberates the repressed energy
which springs from his desire to build infrastructures for his people. This release is
the result of disappointment caused by Sekoni¶s boss refusal for Sekoni to fulfill
the plant project which would assure the village economic development. The new
elites have always neglected the working class; thus, they do no contribute to
social change which theme is Soyinka¶s main literary concerns.

Plastic art through Kola¶s painting is a means of fulfillment in the sense that
it gives meaning to the interpretes¶ life through the introduction of religion. Obi
Maduakor states in µInterpreting The Interpreters¶, ³The world of art in Kola¶s
canvas points boldly to what is missing in their life, that is, religion, the link
between the human and the divine´. This is important in that the interpreters are
alienates who are ³facing a new world with all the weight (but little of the benefits)
of their traditional past. Artworks such as painting and sculptor are means for the
characters to be involved in to their traditional repertory characterized through
Yoruba mythology.

As visual arts, Soyinka adopts also Oral traditional devices such as poetic
and music arts as narrative techniques.

D D
%&#% 

Oral tradition is deeply marked by the poetic and music arts. These latter
including ritual songs and its instruments such as drums, flutes, are very symbolic
in African Negro aesthetics. African discourse has been always entrenched with
poetic characteristics either it is epic, elegy or lyrical. These diverse poetic forms
encompass moral teaching for the natives in their daily socio-political activities. In

‘
‘, Alain Locke relates this African sensitive state to the fact that ³the
Negro is a poet by essence´, hence Soyinka recourses a lot to poetry in his literary
works.

Soyinka¶s poetic language is testified in c
through the language through

which Sekoni¶s dreams are narrated which goes beyond reality to reach fantasy. In
the novel, the narrator describes Sekoni¶s genius through the use of evocative
images characterized mainly by his µpalms¶ which symbolized the source of his
power. It is highlighted through these lines:

And he [Sekoni] closed his palms again, cradling the surge of

power[«] So he opened his palm to the jungle of power from
the charging prisoner, shaft of power nudge the monolith
along the fissures, little grasps of organic ecstasy and paths
were opened « (c
/01

Through this poetic depiction, Soyinka shows Sekoni¶s creative skill to

construct electrical devices for the villagers of Ijioha. Unfortunately, Sekoni¶s
authorities disdain his competence in so far as the boss cancels the engineer¶s
project because he considers that Western experts are more qualified to realize that
kind of work.

The Yoruba writer recourses to the poetic form called dream allegory. The
latter is determined in 
 &


þ "
 as ³a type of poem in which
a character falls asleep and dreams what is told in the poem.´ Equally, poetry is
also present in Egbo¶s poetic utterances. The manifestation of Soyinka¶s use of
poetic language is characterized through Egbo¶s depiction of his romantic
encounter with Simi.
 He describes his sexual experience through these words: ³I am that filled
back in a stiff breeze riding high grass on Warri airfield when it lays fallow´ (c

02); and the narrator¶s own comment of the event: ³«And as a pod strode the
baobab on the tapering thigh, leaf shorn, and high mists swirl him, haze splitting
storms, but the stalk stayed him´ (c, 60). In the novel, although poetic utterances
simulate the state of possession mentioned by Maduakor, they testify to Soyinka¶s
poetic language which is full of African aesthetic symbols. This may not be
surprising in that before being novelist, he is first of all a poet. He is the author of a
large amount of poems. Soyinka¶s poetic status contributes to obscuring his
language which is one of African language¶s characteristics.

This is noticeable in the language which characterizes Egbo¶s sexual relation

with Simi. In the word of Osundare, the only word that really specifies the act is
µthigh¶ and for him, the reader must make efforts to find out the remaining
elements. In this respect, as he still argues ³a lone pod may be referring to the
penis, while the baobab«leaf shone stands for Simi¶s naked body.´ In Osundare¶s
thinking, ³Such impenetrable indirectness may be tolerable in a book of poems; in
prose, it is unnecessarily tough and forbidding.´

Besides, Sagoe¶s philosophy of voidancy is full of sensitive images. Sagoe, a

journalist working in 
c   
3  , writes a book which tackles with
his vision of life called µthe philosophy of Voidancy¶. In discussion with his friend
Mathias, the Messenger of the office, Sagoe defines voidancy as ³the last
uncharted mine of creative energies, in its paradox lays the kernel of creative
liturgy«´ (c, 71) In other words, Sagoe considers his philosophy as artistic
source of inspiration which is mainly spiritual. But Mathias seems not to grasp the
meaning of Sagoe¶s poetic ideology which he is the only to understand the
significance. According to the journalist, this existential thesis is more than
³functional, spiritual, creative or ritualistic, [«]remains the one true philosophy of
the true Egoist´(c, 71). Thus, one may compare Sagoe¶s theory to surrealist
poetry used by the surrealist poets such as Andre Breton to express oppression on
subjugated the weak European nations during the Second World War. Also, Sagoe
hermetic philosophy may hint to Soyinka¶s obscure idiosyncrasy which has been
very criticized by some writers such as Chinwezu. Soyinka¶s obscure style is
comparable to African Negro Aesthetics which have been a longtime considered
by the Western scholars as difficult to study because of its specific framework.

Music arts in Soyinka¶s novel are mainly represented through Joe Golder¶s
songs and the band µapala¶ which perform every night in the bar where the group
of young intellectuals used to frequent. Concerning Joe Golder, he is an Africa
American musician who returns to Nigerian in order to follow his career. He
performs Black American folklore characterized by the Negro spiritual which is a
kind of liturgical song that was song by the Black slaves in the plantation of
America. Joe Golder practices in preparation by using Kola¶s piano. Kola is a
painter who takes his friend Joe Golder as a model of Yoruba deities represented in
the painter¶s work of art. Instead of posing normally for Kola, he takes ³the
vacated piano stool and began to pick out the tune of the Negro spiritual´ (c,
103). Soyinka employs African American songs symbolized by the Negro spiritual
to show the parallelism between Black American and African aesthetics since the
latter stem from to the former. African Negro aesthetics comes mainly from the
slaves¶ oral tradition symbolized by songs which they sang to relieve themselves
after hardworking days in the plantations in the Southern America. African Negro
aesthetics imply not only to the Africans but also to the African American, the
Caribbean and the Diaspora.
 In Soyinka¶s , traditional poetry is very recurrent and is mainly
characterized through different poetic genres such as proverb and dirge. Proverb, a
³short well-known saying that states a general truth or gives advices´, plays an
important role in African Negro aesthetics. It permits to conserve African
moralities and values which are taught generations through generations by the
ancestors to the young people. In , the characters such as The Old Man and
Agboreko, who represent the ancestors, generally comment on or give advice to
the decisions that the living people have to take about the process of the gathering
of the tribes.

Besides, African proverb is characterized by its eloquence that is the art to

speak well which is very relevant to African Negro aesthetics. In the play, Murete,
a tree demon, describes Agboreko¶s use of proverbs as being ³full of colour´
(, 9) in contrast to his own language which is coarse. It is highlighted through
Aroni¶s reproach to Murete for his vulgarity:

Aroni: Yes, I can see where the colour has run and left ugly
patches on you. Be quiet! You are unreliable Murete. You too
meant to leave today. Don¶t lie. (, 9)

Murete, which represents natural element, considers that his ³home [the
forest] looks dead´ because the tree¶ ³leaves have served someone [the living
people] for a feast´ (, 9). That is why he does not want to attend the ritual
gathering which is organized by the Forest Head for the living people.

Besides, African proverb is often endowed with repetition which plays the
role of insistence on the message that the proverb conveyed. Contrary to the view
of the unnecessary characteristic of repetition, Soyinka¶s characters such as
Agboreko the expression ³Proverbs to bones and silence´ at the end of each of his
utterances. It is illustrated through these lines:
 Until the last gourd has been broken, let us not talk of
drought. Proverbs to bones and silence. [+!
 

  
 ]. (, 38)

In this case, Soyinka uses proverb to express the value of patience through
the example of the Old Man who do not want wait too long for knowing the fourth
individual who is with his son Demoke, Rola and Adenebi. The Old Man fears for
the fourth person may be Eshuoro who searches Demoke in order to punish him
because of the carver has killed Oremole, Eshuoro¶s servant.

Regarding to the poetic genre called elegy, it is present in the  and plays
specific function. In Africa traditional society, the dirge man who performs the
funeral ceremonies uses poetic utterance to convey grievance. They enhance the
pain of the relatives¶ deceased person. They share the family¶s pain by mourning in
a poetic way along with the attendants of funeral ceremony. Soyinka adopts this
social issue in his works to acknowledge its religious significance which is very
rooted in Yoruba traditional belief.

This can be highlighted through the character the Dirge Man who the priest
is leading the dance in the occasion of the Gathering of the Tribes. Dirge can be
defined as ³a poem of lament, like the elegy, but shorter and often meant to be
song.´ Soyinka often employs elegiac utterance in his works as in the play with the
dirge man. His utterance is conveyed in a poetic mood as it is illustrated through
these lines: ³Move on eyah. Move apart I felt the wind breathe- no more Keep
away now. Leave the dead /Some room to dance´ (, 39).

The presence of the Dead Man and Dead Woman in the ritual ceremonies is
not good news for the living people because the dead couple is summoned to give
testimony of human beings¶ destructive bent. The dirge man makes know to the
attendant of the ritual meeting human beings¶ misdeeds which the dead man and
the dead woman are going to uncover. It is illustrated through these lines:

If you see the banana leaf

Freshly fibrous like a woman¶s breasts

If you see the banana leaf

Shred itself, thread on thread

Hang wet as the crepe of grief

Don¶t say it¶s the wind. Leave the dead

Some room to dance. (, 39)

The image of µbanana leaf¶ refers to atrocious experience that the dead
couple has experienced in the Court of Mata Kharibu. The dead man who is in fact
the warrior of the king and the dead woman his wife undergo, in Mata Kharibu¶s
realm, mistreatments because the warrior refused to lead the army for an
unjustified war which is ordered by Mata Kharibu. The dead couple¶s shattered
experience even though it is ³thread on thread´ meaning linked up with their
different parts to be uncovered to the attendants of the ritual meeting, still ³hang
wet as the crepe of grief´. In other words, past anguish still remains in the mind of
living people even though it would be a difficult experience to bear it secretly. The
dirge man¶s message conveys pessimistic perspective of human condition which is
represented through yearn for violence symbolized by war, oppression, subjugation
which have mainly taken place in Africa. Soyinka, through the symbolic utterance
of the dirge man, expresses pessimistic vision of the unchanging human condition.

Poetic language is not only found in Soyinka¶s prose; it is also present in

his play . Soyinka¶s use of poetic represented through Agboreko¶s proverbs is
originated from Yoruba traditional poetry. Alain Ricard maintains in 


     that this kind of poetry concerns ³several poems applied to all the
circumstances of life´. Quoting Ulli Beier, Ricard adds that ³The distinctive
characteristics of this type of poetry are humor, images, and the philosophy of the
Yoruba´. Africa Negro aesthetic components such as language are entails with
figures of speech which are very suggestive to mythic and political issues.

African language has been entrenched with poetry and is uttered in every
occasion of the native socio political activity. For instance, in the plantation field,
peasants in their field, sing to rhythm and spur themselves in their works. Soyinka
chooses to adopt this topical experience in his works to better convey themes
dealing with Postcolonial Nigeria. Poetic and music arts used as narrative devices
by Soyinka embody also Yoruba mythic beliefs such as the tragedy of the god
Ogun and are specified through these words: ³Tragic music is an echo from that
void; the celebrant speaks, sings, and dances in authentic archetypal images from
within the abyss.´


constitutes an example of Soyinka¶s aforementioned quotation. In fact,

the µcelebrant¶ refers to the dirge man who welcomes the Dead couple with the
accompaniment of µmusic¶ represented through the drum and flute¶s rhythm. Music
arts characterized through songs, drums, flutes, are traditional tools which allowed
enhancing ritual ceremonies enactment. Soyinka¶s literary works encompass
African negro aesthetic aspects which he succeeds in using it as narrative
techniques.

Visual and poetic arts are very recurrent in  and c, and their mixture
refers to performing arts.

D

'( 
 They can be defined as the merging performance of visual and poetic arts.
Dance, described as a waving sculpture in African culture can be classified in this
range of performing traditional art forms. In , Soyinka adopts Yoruba
masquerade called ³elegungun´ as narrative device through ³mask ±motif´ of the
three mortals such as Demoke, Rola, and Adenebi ³passivity state of mind´ while
they are reliving their past crimes (, 63).

Mask, defined as ³artificial covering for the face or head used as a disguise
or protection´, is especially important in ritual drama such as masquerade.
Soyinka¶s use of mask in  and c refers to an action or manner of an
individual which the reflection of his state of mind either he/she is happy, sad,
active or passive. In other words, Soyinka application of the mask reflects human
condition which is complex in so far as it is endowed with conflicting relationship
between individuals characterized by war, racial discrimination, genocide,
subjugation, and the like.

In the Directing Stage of :

'

" 
  
 

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c 

 
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4  
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56

&7




 



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  "
8
9:1,

Soyinka depicts a scene of masquerade as it is performed in the ritual

ceremonies of some African societies. In such ritual performance, there is the
presence of traditional instruments such as drums, of a priests who are symbolized
by the Forest Head and The Interpreters, and the masqueraders represented by
Demoke, Adenebi and Rola who wear masks characterized in the play by the
µmask-motif¶. Drum is essential because it accompanies the ritual performance and
directs the tune of songs.
 On the other hand, the Forest Head who summons Rola, Demoke and
Adenebi for their self-discovery is the leader of the ritual process. He can be
compared to Oludumare, the supreme Yoruba deity, who brood over the other gods
and the living people. Furthermore, Soyinka¶s use the mask motif refers to the state
of mind of Demoke, Adenebi and Rola which is portrayed as µresigned passivity¶.
This means that while the three protagonists perform masquerade, cannot no longer
control their acts because they are possessed. Here, they are not possessed by
spirits but by their past crimes which they relive.

In their past experiences, Demoke killed his apprentice Oremole, Rola¶s two
suitors two killed one another because of jealousy, while Adenebi is responsible
for the accident of the lorry, µthe Chimney of Ereko¶. It is emphasized through
Obaneji¶s statement:

When it [the Chimney of Ereko] was built, someone looked

at it, and decided that it would only take forty men [«] One
of your office workers took a bribe. A real substantial bribe.
And he changed the capacity to seventy (, 16),

This passage justifies the negligence of the office, which is ruled by

Adenebi, to take a bribe and let the car surpass the required number of passengers
that it has to take. As a result, the car, which is overloaded with passengers, crashes
and catches fire. Obaniji insists on the gravity of the accident through these words:
³Of the seventy people in it, five escape´ (, 17).

In the process of the self-discovery, the three protagonists relive their crimes
passively because of the masks motif they wear. They accept what they have done
without responding actively. Soyinka adapts African Negro aesthetics¶ devices
such as masquerade to, on the one hand, portrays his characters¶ state of mind
which is characterized by their trauma caused by their past crimes. On the other
hand, the Yoruba writer uses masquerade as anaphoric references manly
flashbacks. In fact, once Demoke, Rola and Adenebi wear the masks relive their
past deeds as if there were a shift between the present and the past.

Moreover, according to the conventional structure of dramatic art, there is a

scene in the play called a µrecognition scene¶ which function is to make the
³character discovers some important information which changes the course of
events for him or her.´ This case is very relevant with the self discovery of
Soyinka¶s characters as Demoke, Rola and Adenebi who have to relive their
obscene deeds in Mata Kharibu¶s court through the use of analepses. Soyinka
applies ritual material such as the mask, which is often worn by the elegungun
performer, in his play Soyinka integrates it to deal with socio-political issues.
Besides, the enactment of the elegungun is always marked by the poetic use of
language which helps to enhance Yoruba ritual performance.

The ritual aspect of performing arts is mainly materialized through

masquerade which is the final stage in ceremonies as initiation, birth naming,
wedding, and funerals. Even, the title of the play  may hint to the ritual
connotation that is often entailed with Yoruba¶s every day activities. The functions
of performing arts as dance upholds metaphysical concerns in so far as it is a
³movement of transition; it is used in the 
5 as a visual suspension of
death.´ For the Yoruba, poetry and musical instruments such as drums, flutes, are
used as complementary traditional tools of dancing which convey metaphysical
purposes.

Dancing allows the spirit of the dead people to transcend to heaven

peacefully. In 
 

. !
 , Elesin, the king¶s chief of army,
has to commit ritual suicide in order to facilitate the king¶s soul transition through
the cosmic area. The ritual suicide is followed with musical and poetic enactment
without it the ceremonies could not process.

In connection to Soyinka¶s use of performing art, there is the impact of

language while the masquerader enacts. In ³Interpreting 
c ´,
Maduakor declares that:

In Yoruba society the oral performer or the actor on the stage

is a man possessed, who vey often surrenders his personality
to the external forces whose mouthpiece he has become.

Once on the stage, man is no longer himself; his language is not perceived
by humans. In this regard, Maduakor specifies:

In a possessed utterance, as Soyinka has noted, language is

highly charged, symbolic, mytho embryonic and words are
taken back to their original poetic sources when fusion was
total and the movement of words is the very passage of music
and the tense of images.

However, the use of Soyinka¶s performing arts dance is present in c. It is

illustrated through the dancer in the night club who is ³Owolebi of the squelching
orange´ (c, 122). In the novel, Soyinka depicts the dancer Owolebi through the
interpreters¶ eyes who have different point of view about her performance. In fact,
for Egbo and Sagoe, the dancer with her fat seize, do not embody black beauty
which idea Sekoni does not agree with. For him, African beauty has not to be
judged according to the European standard of interpretation. According to the
European aesthetics, prettiness is valued through exactness of the artwork¶s
features. African traditional dancing, especially the Yoruba one, encompass
aesthetic functions such as the expression of Black women¶ beauty. For the
African, Black woman¶s beauty is symbolized by her dancing gestures in the
occasion of ritual ceremonies. Owolebi, even if depicted as a fat woman, succeed
in being in harmony with the music performed by the µapala band¶.

However, Sekoni has been making a drawing of the dancing woman and
distorting her features in the process, giving her a goiter among other thing.
Through this transformation of the woman features in his drawing, he shows that
African woman is beautiful not because of her gracious form but for the
transcended aspect that she conveys (c, 22).

With regard to this criticism, what Soyinka is doing with the mystical
figure of Ogun is a paramyth. In other words, he uses the Ogun myth many a time
through different Yoruba art works to the detriment of the other myths which
constitute Yoruba mythology. Okpewho¶s reproach is partly true. Most of
Soyinka¶s works, poems, plays, and novels advert to the Yoruba deity. Among
these literary productions, we can mention '


 " where Ogun¶s
challenging spirit and his status as the god of Iron are referred to. This highlighted
in Soyinka¶s '


 " where the character Ofeyi and the people of Aiyero
³grant Ogun pride of place´ thanks to the good reputation of their smithy. In his
journey to the transitional abyss, Ogun has succeeded in crossing the perilous
space with the help of his craft of Iron power handling.

Apart from '


 "; are such plays as 
5, and his poem
c  where the character of Ogun is central through ritual art. However,
Okpewho¶s position is to be relativized in view of works like c. In this novel,
Soyinka displays Yoruba mythology conception of world creation to the Yoruba
pantheon, as shown at the outset of Chapter Fifteen and through Kola¶s painting.

African Negro aesthetics composed mainly of visual arts such as painting

and sculpture; poetic dirge and music arts, and performing arts including
masquerade and dance and they upholds diverse functions. It conveys moral
teachings such as the virtue of patience through the use of proverbs as it is
symbolized by the character Agboreko¶s utterance. Kola¶s panting express the need
for the Yoruba to take reference of their deities¶ creative bent in order to change
postcolonial Nigerian¶s tremendous social conditions. Sculpture, through Sekoni¶s
µWrestler¶, expresses African¶s feeling which is mainly influenced by his beliefs in
metaphysical forces embodied by mythology.

African Negro aesthetics is perceived in its whole body that is, its artistic
components include many art forms which have been disseminated throughout the
world due to immigration. So there is need to reassemble the different forms of art
into one entity to have an effective interpretation of it. This idea is present in
Soyinka¶s c where he portrays Kola¶s artistic initiative. In fact, the painter
suggests to the musician Joe Golder to organize an exhibition of paintings and µthe
Wrestler¶, Sekoni¶s sculpture, which is going to be accompanied with Joe Golder¶s
concert. It is illustrated through Kola¶s words: ³If possible I will time the
exhibition for you concert. We could even hold it in the Theater Foyer´ (c, 218).
In fact, ³Joe Golder was overjoyed with the idea´ (c, 218) because it would at last
buy the µWrestler¶ Sekoni¶s woodcarving which he admires a lot. The attempt to
gather the different art forms by Kola and Joe Golder shows that the different
artworks have to share the same scene since they constitute mutual complementary
aesthetic devices.

The essential role of traditional art is to reflect Soyinka¶s characters¶

tremendous journeys as it is underscored by Haney through this words: ³As
Soyinka sees it, when the protagonist of drama enters the gulf and transcends
conflict to experience the fourth stage, this experience is not a subjective fantasy
but a mimetic rite that incorporates poetry and dance´However, these traditional
artworks used by Soyinka as narrative devices embody thematic and symbolic
aspect related to Nigerian socio-political realities.






#
c 



This part will be dedicated to the evaluation of the main themes developed
in Soyinka¶s literary production which is entrenched in Yoruba mythology and
ritual drama. Soyinka¶s thematic perspective is mainly centered on individual or
rather collective socio political experiences in Postcolonial Nigerian. In (  


*  
; 
)  
 


 


  


+ 
#,
Omar Sougou determines the term µthe postcolonial¶ as standing for the dominated
countries which were politically and economically subjugated by the hegemonic
Western empires. He goes further in his arguments by giving detailed information
about postcolonial characteristics through these words:

The concept of µthe postcolonial¶ refers to the formely

colonized Third and Fourth Worlds, which have gained
relative independence from the empire though they are still
dependent economically and culturally in some ways

To better grasp Soyinka¶s use of Africa aesthetics as committed to the

Postcolonial Nigeria, one may has first to acknowledge Nigerian historical
background.

Like all other African countries, Nigeria was occupied by the white
colonizers who first came as missionaries with the aim to convert the local
populations, before settling there and imposing their rule. There was an indirect
rule in Nigeria. In other word, it was not white colonizers who ruled, but some
natives who received order from British colonizers. After many years under British
imperialism rule, it achieved its independence which became a republic with four
regional governments, in which the ruling party, largely Northerners, dominated
the new nation. A crisis occurred n 1964 when electoral boycott took place during
the first general election. This situation led to some disorders in 1965, after the
ruling political party rigged elections in the Western (Igbo) region.

In January 1966, a coup led by the army officers belonging to the Igbo
ethnic group overthrow the civil government and murdered the prime ministers and
the primers of the Western and Northern regions. A military government led by
Major General Johnson

On May 30, Ojukwu proclaimed the secession of the Eastern region and the
formulation of the Republic of Biafra. Soon, fighting broke out between the federal
and the Biafran forces. Although the Biafran forces backed up by many writers at
first did well, by early October the federal forces had captured Enugu their capital.
Despite attempts by the Organization of African Unity to end the civil war, but it
continued until 1970 at which point the federal forces had starved the Biafran
populations into submission. Ojukwu fled the country on January 1fst, and a
delegation to Lagos formally surrendered on January 1st, 1970, thus ending the
existence of the Republic of Biafran.

Soyinka experiences the Nigerian civil war during which he was imprisoned.
The civil war was mainly provoked by the decision of the state of Biafra to secede
from Nigeria in April of the same year. The military regime of Gowon had set up a
hegemonic policy. This type of military domination which has always clung to
Nigerian regimes is described in these lines by Jibrin Ibrahim:
 The military have ruled Nigeria for 25 out of the 34 years
when the country has existed as an independent entity with an
enormous impact on the country¶s culture and
institutions«military rules ultimately impacts negatively on
society by generalizing its authoritarian values which are in
essence antisocial and destructive of politics. Politics in this
sense understood the art of negotiating conflicts related to the
exercise of power.

The death-toll of the Nigerian civil war was high; this situation impels
Soyinka to be involved in it through his literary works. He is very sensitive to
human freedom as he confesses in an interview quoted by Jones: ³I believe there is
no reason why human beings should not enjoy maximum freedom. To detract from
the maximum freedom socially possible, to me, is treacherous. I do not believe in
dictatorship benevolent or malevolent.´

Consequently, Soyinka undertook actions meant to end the war, as he

underlines it in The Man Died. However, his efforts led to his imprisonment for the
military regime charged him with backing the rebels. His antagonist position to
civil war can be symbolized by the character the Warrior in  The commander
in chief of Mata Kharibu¶s army refuses to wage war without valid grounds as the
king has wanted him to do.

This historical context of postcolonial Nigerian is used by Soyinka to rise

issues related to the injustice that Nigerians were undergoing. As we can see, by
the time Soyinka wrote  and c, Nigerian was experiencing a serious
transitional power from the colonizers to the new elites. A few days after the
publication of the play, independence was celebrated in the country.

After many years of political ruling, the multiple military coups led to the
occupation of Nigeria by some soldiers. The latter seemed to be worse than the
civilians because they brought dictatorship and tyranny in postcolonial Nigeria.
There was corruption, poverty and conflicts in modern Nigeria.  and c depict
this precarious socio political condition through the use of traditional aesthetics as
narrative techniques. The novel
was written soon after Nigerian got its
independence. It portrays the corruption prevailing in the country after the colonial
era. Narrativelly, it is considered a difficult and complex work especially of its
disjointed narration. It contains some aspects of Yoruba culture with the presence
in the novel of features belonging to Yoruba mythology.

 was produced on the eve of Nigerian Independence in 1960. Soyinka¶s

image of the ³Gathering of the tribes´ represents the celebration of independence
in a pessimistic mood symbolized by the dead couple¶s anxiety o human beings¶
destructive bent. The Yoruba writer uses African aesthetics composed mainly of
tribal art to denounce the lethargy of African leaders who the most exploit the
mass. In c, the young intellectuals who consider themselves as belonging to the
middle class choose to depart from the ignorant working class in order to better
have an affective interpretation of Nigerian precarious society. However, they are
victim of the new elite¶s corrupted policy which is characterized through Sekoni¶s
Boss.

Soyinka is not the only African writer who deals with this post
independence problem. Other African writers also have approached postcolonial
trouble through oral tradition items. It is the case of Ngugi Wa Thiong¶o, a Kenyan
writer who dealt with the matter in most of his novels such as  


*.
Like him, Ngugi depicts in this novel the hard trouble lived by his people
transmitted through African aesthetics such as proverbs, storytelling, mythology
and the like. Soyinka¶s way of approaching postcolonial thematic is different from
the socialist writers such as Ngugi Wa Thiong¶o, Alex La Guma, hence the critic
Steward Crehan asserts:
 Soyinka has two main literary modes: the tragic and the
satiric. His tragic drama and fiction, far from hypostatizing
the ³uncorrupted individual´, present us with a dialect in
which self-realization can only be attained through the
experience of disintegration, a journey into and through the
³no man¶s land of transition´, involving the ³annihilation´ or
³distortion´ of self.

Hence,  and c are adopted as the ³no man¶s land of transition´ which
the protagonists have to cross so that they may change their socio-political
condition. The theme of revolutionary alternative is differently dealt with in
African literature. African writers can be divided into two categories regarding to
their narrative technique choice. Firstly, there are writers who are labeled as radical
traditional ones because they suggest drastic alternative perspective in order to
overthrow the alleged corrupted government which is composed of the new elites.
Secondly, we can notice the moderate traditional writers, among which we can
mention Wole Soyinka.

Soyinka¶s two postcolonial literary works show the deep impact that Yoruba
culture still has on the modernized Yoruba after their contact with the colonizers.
Soyinka, like Senghor and Cesaire, is a defender of African Negro aesthetics in
general. The Yoruba culture he is dealing with in about all his novels and plays just
serves as a particular means to depict this general African culture¶ He can be said
to be a modern storyteller, for he takes his inspiration from his Yoruba oral
tradition. He helps us to have a clear understanding of the power of African moral
values that continue to have great influence of the behavior of the decolonized
Yoruba.

It is then useful to emphasize on the importance of the oral tradition because

we can see through it the whole African culture. According to him, the main task
of the African writer is to know the very importance of the African past in relation
to other issues such as colonialism, and the like.

Although Soyinka is very much attractive to his African culture, he

nevertheless does not idealize it. He depicts Yoruba or African aesthetics while
denouncing at the same time their historical and postcolonial problems. Depictions
of some aspects of Yoruba cultures are very recurrent in A and c which are
considered as cultural and political literary outputs.

In the purpose to better cover thematic aspect, we are going first to analyze
Dialectical Marxism characteristics in  and c.

%(

Critical Realism in Soyinka¶s  and c is characterized through

Dialectical Marxism and Yoruba aesthetic morality. As underlined in 

*  
# " , dialectical Marxism, known also as dialectical
materialism, is:

A theory which basic tenets are that everything which

material and change takes places through the ³struggle of
opposition´« Central to historical materialism is the belief
that change takes place through the meeting of the two
opposite forces (thesis and antithesis).

Soyinka adopts Marx¶s literary theory in his works to examine the

opposition between the high and working class. In c, the writer deals with social
class confrontation between the well-off symbolized mainly by the Oguazors and
the Pinkshores who belong to the high class and the working class represented
mainly by group of young intellectuals such as Bandele, Sekoni, Sagoe, and the
like. Whereas in , it is characterized through conflicting relationship between
the tyrannical king Mata Kharibu and his wife Madame Tortoise who subjugate
their servants such as the Warrior and his soldiers without any accurate grounds.
Soyinka has a particular adoption of dialectical Marxism in  and c. In fact, in
Soyinka¶s work dialectical materialism is ³«less dialectical, more destructive in
its contempt for those elites and institutions to which the committed artist finds
himself naturally opposed.´ Soyinka represents postcolonial Nigeria through the
image of the transitional abyss which is crossed difficultly because of its complex
setting represented through the µabyss of transition¶. Soyinka uses this mythic
image to symbolize postcolonial Nigeria which is marked by policy
mismanagement.

Among the range of issues raised by the critical works on Soyinka, there is
one that grasps our attention.
Indeed, Abdulrazak Gurnah has published
extensively on Wole Soyinka¶s works. He deals with ³
  


(

'" &´, particularly that of c. In this paper, Gurnah analyses Soyinka¶s use of
satire and tragedy through the situation and role of the friends who interpret the
Nigerian society.

The critic Gurnah brings the reader within the postcolonial literary setting
which is marked by class struggle. His analysis has the advantage of focusing the
role of traditional artist regarding to Nigerian corrupted system; if he will side with
the grabber new elites or with oppressed masses. In c, this can be illustrated
through these words of the character Sagoe addressed to his friends Kola and
Bandele:

The man says to me, you young men are always criticizing.
You only criticize destructively, why don¶t you put some
concrete proposal, some scheme for improving the country in
any way, and then you will see whether we take it up or not.
(c, 238)
 In ³Sprit of Negation in the Works of Soyinka´, Steward Crehan depicts
Soyinka¶s novels and plays¶ setting as modeled to the abyss of transition by
quoting Van Genep: ³The whole of the society, in this case Nigerian society, now
become the no man¶s land of transition: Van Genep¶s µrooms¶ become passages
and passages becomes rooms.´ Soyinka¶s characters evolve in a perilous area as it
is the case for Ogun while crossing the gulf. In fact, he encounters harmful spirits
which were trying to abort his journey which purpose is to link the divine figures
and their worshipers. Soyinka¶s characters have to face to socio-political problems
symbolized by alienation and corruption in  and c.

Taking into account the unchanged nature of human condition characterized

through the dead couple¶s pessimistic consideration on the mortals¶ behavior in
 and the cancellation of Sekoni¶s project by his Boss in c; one may assert that
Soyinka¶s works does not idealized Nigerian social realities. However, according
to Crehan the ³spirit of negation in Soyinka¶s works is not nearly a negative
outlook´. It urges the African to be aware of their social condition entail with
exploitation and corruption.

Actually, instead of trying to trigger of socio-economic development for

African nation, the new elites take benefit from the country¶s welfare.
Consequently, there is a division of the social pattern into the ruling class and the
victims who are mainly composed of the working class. Nevertheless, Black
intellectual from the middle class is, more or less, the suitable individual who
would find solutions by making the masses aware of their precarious social
situation.
 In c, Soyinka¶s satirical portrayal is the chairman of Sekoni¶s board (c,
27). Hence, Sekoni¶s dream, the settlement of the station power in the village of
Ijioha, ends in frustration because of the cancellation of the project. Besides,
Sagoe¶s attempt to publicize the story meets the same fate; obstructed by the
corrupt establishment (c, 96). Working as a journalist in the Independent
Viewpoint, Sagoe wanted to acknowledge the reason why Sekoni¶s engine had
been canceled without any valid grounds.

As for , Soyinka adopts dialectical materialism in the historic

perspective. Widely known, African remote emperies such as Songhai, Mali have
been loosely praised through the traditional epic poems transmitted through
generations by griots. In the play, African heritage is represented through the
gathering of the tribes which draw together the world of the living and dead
people, and the unborn. Adenebi describes the gathering of the tribes as the
celebration of African past glory. It is highlighted through his words:

Adenebi: The accumulated heritage- that is what we are

celebrating. Mali. Chaka. Songhai. Glory. Empires.
[«](, 8)

According to Adenebi, one may not forget historical figures as Chaka Zulu,
the famous South African warrior, and great empires such as Mali and Songhai
which played socio-economic roles centuries ago in Africa.

However, according to some African scholars those empires had been

entrenched with destructive enterprises as wars, tyranny, slavery and so forth. In c

; 
 

 
;  

[ , the remote social system, which is
considered by Eyre Banning, a traditional guitarist as ³a virtual social, political,
and cultural charter of society´ is somehow reexamined through Soyinka¶s &.
  is the about the depiction of Mata Kharibu¶s court as the embodiment
of the negative image of the African empires before the arrival of the colonizers. In
the play, dialectical Marxism, the confrontation between social classes, is
symbolized through the altercation between the monarchy symbolized by the King
Mata Kharibu and Madame Tortoise with their servants characterized through the
Warrior and the court poet. Mata Kharibu is disappointed regarding to the
Warrior, the chief of the army, who refuses to go war against another empire. The
king fears for the soldier¶s refusal in so far he thinks that the latter wants to
overthrow him. The tyrannical king thinks that the warrior may be mad that is why
he dares to disobey him. It is illustrated through these lines: ³Why should my
slave, my subject, my mere human property say, unless he is mad, I shall not fight
this war´ (, 60).

Regarding to the capricious Madame Tortoise, she makes her servants to run
useless errands in the purpose to do them wrong. The court poet, who is conscious
of the woman¶s tricks, makes her remark that ³if not a soldier fall to his death from
the roof two days ago [«]?´(, 53). As a means of justification to her crime,
Madame Tortoise asserts:

Madame Tortoise: I heard a disturbance, and I called the

guard to find the cause. I thought it came from the roof and I
directed him there. He was too eager and he fell (, 53).

This destructive bent on the subjects by The king and the queen is justified
through the quest of power which purpose has been the quest for many African
leaders. It is highlighted through the Soothsayer¶s words: ³It is in the nature of men
to seek power over the lives of others, and there is always something lower than a
servant´ (, 61).
 This line relates The Soothsayer¶s wise warning to the tyrannical Mata
Kharibu. The Soothsayer knows that Mata Kharibu¶s ruling is arbitrary but he
could not denounce the King¶s unfair judgments for fear to be brutalized.

Social class confrontation implication is dealt with in Soyinka¶s works in

consideration with the postcolonial Nigerian society in the 1960s. For some
Marxists such as Lupasco, divergence between the oppressors and the oppressed is
necessary because it triggers of revolutionary wave which would alternate
established dictatorship ruling implemented by the new elites in African societies.
Quoting Lupasco, Gilbert Durant shows the need for the clash of contradictions as
significant through these words: ³« the real dialect, according to Lupasco¶s
saying, is not an appeased synthesis, it is an actual tension of the contradictions.´
Soyinka applied Marxist theory of the social class dialect to revise fragmented
postcolonial Nigerian composed mainly of oppressors such as the new elites and
the oppressed meaning the working class.

Another theme developed in the play is the role of the intellectuals or the
artists face to injustice triggered of by the new elite. In fact, in Postcolonial
Nigeria, education was considered as a means to counter colonial discourse
embodied through corruption, oppression, and the like. However, some African
intellectuals, instead of being the symbol of revolutionary alternative, opt to
encourage corrupted political system. It is highlighted through the corrupted Court
Physician. While defending the Warrior who is ordered to wage to Mata Kharibu¶s
enemies without any relevant justification, the court physician try to convince the
warrior to follow the King¶s ordinance. It is shown through these lines depicting
the conflict between Mata Kharibu and the Warrior:

Physician: Was ever a man so bent on his own

destruction«
 Warrior: Mata Kharibu is leader, not merely of soldiers but of
men
Let him turn the unnatural pattern of men always
eating up one another (
 , 55-56).

In the purpose of dealing with social change issues, Soyinka revises

inglorious historical events. The reexamination of the past in Soyinka¶s 
shows pessimistic perspective about human being¶s self consciousness. This is
underscored through S. Haney¶s words:

By reliving their previous incidents of their present crimes, the

mortals (Demoke, Rola, and Adenebie) reveal the functioning of
no changing pure consciousness that is the basis for historical
change

For Soyinka, the artists, represented through Demoke and Sekoni in 
and c, have to take part to the struggle for social change. The latter known also as
social alternative has been the main concern of many committed African writers
such Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa Thiong¶o, Buchi Emetcha, and the like. It deals
with the socio political attitudes that the Africans have to adopt for the
development of their countries. For Soyinka the natives have, first of all, to
apprehend their culture and customs symbolized by mythology and oral tradition.
In this regard Haney asserts the importance function of Soyinka¶s drama through
these words: ³Like dramatic forms, ritual forms aim to expand individual and
collective consciousness and to provide the community with an experience of its
own identity.´Soyinka¶s ritual drama have succeeded in dealing with postcolonial
main concerns in so far as they ³«achieve both objectives, portraying, among
others themes, the conflict between the values of the old society and the new, the
sense of the repetitive futility, folly and waste of human history, and the need for
redemption´.

By and large, Soyinka¶s dialectical Marxism is more bent to the role of the
artists and intellectuals regarding to Nigerian postcolonial.

D#)& %

Each culture is grounded in ethic values which ³may be viewed either as the
standard of conduct that the individual has constructed for himself or as the body
of obligation and duties which a particular society requires of its members´. This
social demand is very rooted in mythology and ritual drama in Soyinka¶s  and
c.

In the situation of postcolonial Nigeria, the natives who come across British
culture tend to reject their own traditional values in so far as they would find it
useless to face to modern way of living. In c, Soyinka depicts assimilation
through the Oguazor¶s family who consider themselves as no more natives but
rather British citizens. This is illustrated through the µGarden Party¶ they organize
with the presence of eminent authorities from the Nigerian government. Their
attitude would be due to the fact that they have not been entrenched with their
traditional heritage consisting mainly of Yoruba rites and mythology. That is why,
William. S Haney in ³Soyinka¶s Ritual Drama: Unity, Postmodernism, and the
Mistake of the Intellect´ to assert that ³In the context of modern Africa,
colonialism has complicated and corrupted the relationship between ritual and
myth, experience and understanding´.

On the other hand, there are natives who grasp the significant role African
Negro aesthetics, mainly the importance to conserve one¶s own traditional heritage
characterized through religion. In the domain of spirituality, the Yoruba take in
account the relationship between the different worlds of existence such as the
spirituals, the living and the unborn.

In the novel, Yoruba religious believe is symbolized by the stuttering

Sekoni. He believes in the link between the human and the divine, the dead and the
living, past and present. As he says: ³«b-b bridges d-d don¶t jjjust g-g- go from
hhhere to ththere; a bridge also faces backwards´ (c, 9). Through the image of the
dome he conveys the transition spirit: ³life, or d-d-death, b-b- both are c-c-
contained in th-the single d-d-dome of ex«istence´ (c, 122).

In , Soyinka depicts Sekoni¶s dome of existence which reflects the past
and present time, as complex in so far as they always not record human beings¶
virtues. Adenebi, the orator of council, thinks that presence of the dead couple,
who symbolizes the past, can be considered as positive reference for the next
generation to come. That is why he praises the dead couple¶s summoning through
these words: ³Let us assemble them [the dead couple] round the totem of the
nation and we will drink from their resurrected glory´ (, 32). But, the Old Man
tells to Adenebi the real reasons that the dead couple is going to make know to the
attendant of the ritual meeting. It is highlighted through his words:

Old Man: They [the dead man and the dead woman] have
only come to undermine our strength. To preach to us how
ignoble we are. They are disgruntled creatures who have
come to accuse their superiors as if this [the gathering of the
tribes] were a court of law´ (, 33)

The symbiosis and conflicting characteristics of the world of the living and
the supernatural are used by Soyinka as techniques of characterization in the view
of suggesting the political and social upheavals in post independent Nigerian, but
also of expressing pessimistic future.
 In the postcolonial context, the new elites become more and more immoral
by corrupting the whole Nigerian social system. In African traditional society, the
respect of the individual right is very considered and this would permit people to
live in harmony. However, European mode of life influence on the natives makes
them neglect their own wealthy culture which is characterized through communal
way of life. Socially, Western culture, yet adopted by the African societies,
dominates traditional teaching in so far as the African is assimilated through the
loss of his cultural heritage.

Hybrid cultures issue is mainly analyzed in Soyinka¶s works through

characters that have dilemma to choose between their own cultures or Western
assimilated way of living. It has been a reality in every African society where the
colonizers have imposed their rules and beliefs on the natives. For the Yoruba
writer, the African intellectual who is experiencing two different cultures has to
manage his/her way of life in so far as he would not be too assimilated but also not
radically rooted in its dogmas. Many African writers have attended school in the
European universities. Once there, they are confronted with the influence of
Western way of living which is characterized mainly through individual way of
living.

Consequently, the black intellectuals find difficult to reintegrate their native

lands once back to Africa. It is the case for the group of interpreters, whom the
most have stayed in London a while before returning to Nigeria. Considering
themselves as the intellectuals of their society, they try to understand the social
system brought about by the independence new wave. In this respect, Soyinka
adapts mythology characterized by Ogun¶s tendency of creativity and
destructiveness through his characters quest for identity.
 African Negro literature¶s concerns have been mainly the exploration of
mythology, traditional artworks such masks, painting to deal with postcolonial
issues. Among them we can mention the threat of moral degradation led by the
Western system of ruling. Before the colonial agents left some African countries
which have gained independence, they had succeeded in indoctrinating natives
who are tending to be assimilated.

As mentioned above, each society has its own myth; this is the case of the
African societies. In     

"
  , Pierre Brunel asserts that
traditionally, in Black African societies, myth is conceived in relation to its
cosmogonic bias. It underlines the closes link which exists between the social and
the sacred. It defines the origins, the beliefs, explains and legitimizes social
institutions. It gives meaning to their daily realities and constitutes the system of
knowledge useful to the ethnic community.

In the words of Brunel, in the Black African conception of myth, the world
is classified as follows: there is a supreme force and, below this force, there is a
hierarchy between the beings. First, there are the genies and the supernatural
beings that are of charge of organizing the universe next, the dead ancestors who
are followed by the livings, and finally the inferior spirits living in the animal,
vegetal and mineral worlds. In the Black African conception of the world there is
stratification. This gives way to what Obiajuru Maduakor calls ³a harmonious
world view in which the constituent elements are interrelated, inseparable from one
another without the risk of disrupting the cosmic order.´

In Africa, each ethnic group possesses cosmogonic stories relating the

different stories of creation, the universe, man, and gods. The Yoruba¶s ethnic
group, have their own conception of world creation. They have their own vision of
the three aspects of time: past, present and future. According to Obi Maduakor in
³Interpreting 
c ´ in (
'" &<

c   


(  , the
Yoruba believe that the world was created by Oludumare who was there supreme
deity. He achieved this task with the help of Orisa nla (Obatala). As it is pinpointed
in ["
þ  
 


 
(, Orisa nla is at the core of the Yoruba
pantheon which is made of one hundred and one gods. He was attacked by his
rebellious slave, Atunda who threw him a boulder. Consequently, he became
fragmented and each fragment turned into deity.

Concisely, Yoruba mythology exploration can help the native be in close

connection to his/her traditional heritage. Many African¶s concerns have been the
apprehension of African identity which is deeply rooted in oral tradition. However,
postcolonial Nigeria, characterized through the clash between the native tradition
and the colonizers, has resulted to cultural alienation. Soyinka¶s  and c depict
the different way of life between the urban and rural areas.

The play is thoroughly located in rural setting, especially in the forest where
the city dwellers such as Demoke, Rola and Adenibi are summoned to attend the
µGathering of the Tribes´. In the novel, Soyinka swifts settings from the urban
ones represented through infrastructures, such as the night club where the group of
friends use to meet to tell their daily experiences, to rural one symbolized through
Egbo¶s native village where he has to be elected as Chief.

The assimilated indigenous is no longer interested to his traditional heritage

such as the character Egbo, in c, who prefer to µgo with the tide¶ instead of
staying in his village as the Osa (the Chief) (c, p 14). In , Soyinka analyses
the environment protection issue characterized through pollution of the African
nature leading to deforestation. Western industries implemented in Africa have
disastrous consequences on the species and the vegetal.

In the play, the image of Ogun¶s destructive bent is embodied through the
Old Man, council elder orders Adenibi, the council orator, to put the µChiminey of
Eroko¶, a disastrous car in order to intoxicate the forest. This process aims at
polluting the forests in order to make the Dead man and his wife to make them flee
away of ceremonial place. The dead couple, who were victims of Mata Kharibu¶s
subjugation in their previous life, is the guests of honor whom the forests have to
dance for. Once invited in the present celebration of the living people feast, the
immortal witness living people obscenities characterized through the corrupted
Slave holder who gives money to the Historian to convince Mata Kharibu to
choose his slave boat (, p.61).

Despite the destructive position of some protagonists such as the Old Man,
Soyinka depicts characters as Adenibi and Eshuoro as the defenders of such crime
to the nature which is very essential to human survival. In the first part of the play,
Adenebi¶s creative bent is represented through his refusal to infect the forest with
the Chimney of Eroko. He considers such deed as useless because the Gathering of
the tribes, through Demoke¶s carving of the totem, is conceived as symbol of the
human community and spirituals¶ unification. This ritual link constitutes social
demand that Yoruba moral aesthetics required for the stability of the socio political
paradigms. In this sense, Eshuoro, a forest dweller claims for the unbearable
atmosphere of the forests due the dangerous gas from cars, bus, and the like. It is
highlighted through his protesting words: ³today they even dared to chase out the
forest spirits by poisoning the air with petrol fumes. Have you seen how much of
the forest has been torn down for their petty decorations?´(, 45).
 Ogun¶s destructive bent is represented not only parallel to individual
perspective as through the crime of Demoke, but also it highlighted through the
communal destructiveness on the nature caused by mankind. Soyinka¶s  can
be considered as a warning of the threat of the living resources¶ deficient due to
pollution. For this, he uses supernatural beings, namely the spirits living in the
forest as narrative technique.

In the same way, Soyinka uses dramatic narrative device as harmatia to deal
with human condition particularly African one. Harmatia can be account for as ³a
defect in his [the hero] character, or an error of judgment.´ This shows that
Soyinka¶s tragic hero such as Demoke in 
and Egbo in The Interpreters can be
judged entirely good or bad. They are, at same time, authors and victims of
criminal deeds characterized by oppression and brutality. As we can see, Soyinka¶s
works re-examines human predicament mainly the Nigerian one through the use of
Yoruba oral tradition such as the µFourth stage¶.

Hence, Soyinka considers Yoruba mythology and ritual drama as able to

convey and preserve Yoruba ethic values in  and c
However, myth, defined
as ³related to a particular civilization, group of people, or to a religion and
particularly Greek and Latin´, though is more closed to nature and the sacred, also
encompasses moral values.

That is why, Soyinka posits that Yoruba gods¶ tragedies, mainly Ogun¶s
one, ³emerge as the principal features of the drama of the gods; it is within their
framework that traditional society poses its social questions or formulates it
moralities´. For the Yoruba playwright, Yoruba morality resides in the fact that
living people must diminish the gulf that exists between the ³mystical´, referring to
the supernatural beings and the ³mundane´ which stands for human community. It
can be done only through the means of ³sacrifices, the ritual, and the ceremonies of
appeasement to those cosmic powers which lie guardian to the gulf´. This hints the
issue of sacrifice which is current in Yoruba culture. In c, Sekoni¶s death on a
motor accident on the road can be considered as a sacrifice to Ogun, also known as
the god of the road for he can protect drivers against accident. The ceremonies of
appeasement is illustrated in , especially in Part Two, through the ritual
welcoming for the Dead couple which is performed with traditional arts such as
dance, masquerade, drums, flutes, and the like.

One of the main preoccupations of African Negro aesthetics is to transmit

moral teaching to its collective social consciousness in order to ensure harmony in
society. This solidarity is illustrated through these words of Senghor: => "

 
  "´.

Soyinka shows in his literary works the use of ritual drama pattern as a
portrayal of Yoruba social and religious morality. According to the Yoruba, the
³abyss of transition´ embodied by the Promethean god Ogun permits the individual
conscious to be more aware of his cultural identity and to resist Eurocentric
cultural thread. In fact, Kola tries to fulfill his religious impulse through the
painting of Yoruba Pantheon in c. As for Demoke, in , he regains his moral
consciousness thanks to the masquerade ritual process symbolized by the
µtransitional abyss¶ which refers to postcolonial Nigeria.

As morality is concerned, slavery has been one of the humankind crime ever
perpetuated in the history of mankind. Slavery has been often the enterprise of the
Europeans who captured African natives to make them work in the plantations
mainly in Southern America. However, the slaveholders were not only composed
of Westerners; there were also some African monarchs who were trading slaves
within their empires. The damaging effect of slavery is a social issue which is very
recurrent in . The playwright through the depiction of Mata Kharibu revises
African history which was involved in slavery.

Postmodernist fragmented style is bedrock in Soyinka¶s literary works and

this is asserted by Femi Osofian through these words: ³'" &!
 



? 
 


   
 
 
 

  "


"´In fact, the
fragmented way the events are narrated is the result of the influence of
Postmodernism. Applied to Yoruba cosmological beliefs, it consists of the
coexistence of the past, present and future time in Soyinka¶s ³transitional abyss´
where the characters have to cross for their redemption and their self-realization
which symbolizes Black consciousness

Furthermore, Sekoni embodies Ogun-Will that is his impulse to create or

destruct. Like the Yoruba deity, his being is fragmented by the ordeals he
undergoes: the cancellation of the plant for the village, the spreading of his history
in the whole country, and his mental breakdown. But armed with his will, which is
impelled by his pilgrimage to Mecca, he reaches the stage of creativeness in the
carving of the wrestler.

Soyinka¶s traditional writing is marked by three major events: his childhood,

the Nigerian Civil war, and his imprisonment. His young days were filled with
occurrences which appear in his writings. This period is alluded to in The
Interpreters through Sagoe remembering his Sunday school days at the time when
Egbo, Dehinwa, and he were lads.

As a boy, he used to attend school where he leant much about Christianity.

Though, Soyinka major literary works have influence by the Yoruba traditional
belief, he grows up within a Christian family. Among the ³biblical texts´ used in
works, one could read the following homilies as Soyinka himself reveals in &:
³Remember Now Thy Creator in the Days of Thy Youth, Remember Now Thy
Creator, The Lord Is My Shepherd.´ Through these lines we can see that that
Soyinka¶s hybrid experiences characterize his major works such as  and c.

All in all, Soyinka posits Yoruba ritual performance as a mean of self-

identification and of resisting European cultural influence in 
and c
These
Yoruba ritual devices are specifically represented through symbols which can be
divided into language and figures of speech, and the Yoruba diction.



* 
# c 



For Western concept of symbolism can be explained as the ³use of symbols

to represent things, especially in art and literature.´ Concerning, African
Symbolism, it is very diverse in relation to the characteristic of its specific ethnic
group folklore and is differently conceived from European symbolism. For Gilbert
Durant, the symbol can be defined as ³first of all belonging to the category of the
sign´. According to him the sign permit to summarize a detailed meaning
represented through a word or a group of a reduced words. Nevertheless, this
symbolical mark is chosen in function of one¶s culture realities; then, the alienated
people to this custom may not grasp the meaning of the sign embodied mainly in
the different domains of art such plastic arts, literature, and the like.
Among the figures of speech which depicts the most the symbol is the
allegory. The latter is defined as the ³concrete translation of an idea difficult to
grasp or merely to express´. The allegory always encompasses a concrete element
or sample of the signified. According to Durant, there are two kind of signs: ³The
arbitrary signs which are purely indicative«and the allegoric signs which express
to a reality which it means´.Thus, one may understand why Western scholars find
difficult to seize African symbolism which is represented through ritual drama and
mythology in Soyinka¶s  and c
The mythic symbol goes beyond the physical experience, it makes the reader
transcend to an imaginary world which embodies cosmogonic concerns. As
asserted in ["
þ  
 


 
(, the Yoruba pantheon is
composed of deities who represent the transcendental characteristics of human
beings¶ creative and destructive nature. Among the Yoruba gods, Ogun is the only
who succeed in embodying human being propensity to gain salvation, due to his
previous gore experience, by his willing to cross the perilous abyss of transition.

In  as in c, the symbolic of human beings is deeply rooted in Yoruba

mythology. Among the examples of the symbols in Soyinka¶s works, there is
human being such as Demoke in  and Sekoni in c They are symbolic in so
far as, in Yoruba folklore, traditional artists uphold religious role. Concerning
natural element symbols used in Soyinka¶s output, gods such as Ogun and its
shrine like ³water´, ³rock´, and ³forests´ are very recurrent in  and c

 In this way, one may hint that the principal concerns of symbolism ³is the
insensitive characterized in all its forms: ³the unconscious, metaphysic, unnatural
and surreal´. These abstract concepts are often represented through physical items
such as art composed of language, plastic and performing arts. In the literary field,
Soyinka has a particular use of these literary components which are mainly applied
in Nigerian postcolonial and Yoruba traditional literary works.
Quoting Paul Ricoeur, Durand asserts that one may distinguish two authentic
concrete dimensions of symbol: ³«cosmic, and finally poetic, meaning that the
symbol always does recourse to the mere language which is able to express
concrete things´. Language and imagery are concepts which are variously defined.
In 
 
 , 
c 
# " 
   ", language is a
system of knowledge found in a social or cultural group of people including a
grammar and vocabulary that offer substantial communication among its users as
well as vocal sound having symbols so as to shape, convey and communicate
thoughts and feeling. It can also be considered as a particular way of uttering or
choosing words, and finally a specific manner of speaking or writing. This last
definition of language will enables to analyze Soyinka¶s language through the
specifities which characterize his writing.

Soyinka¶s literary works are the subject of many critics among we can
mention The Nigerian writer Chinwezu. It is highlighted through his article


 @ 



 
þ  , where he deals with the issue of
Soyinka hermetic and obscure traditional style. The particularity of Soyinka¶s way
of writing is very symbolic regarding to African Negro aesthetics as far as literary
works is concerned. In fact, Soyinka has been accused of obscurantism by some
literary critics such as Onwuchekwa Jamie, Ihechukwu Madubuke, and Chinweizu
Ibekwe in the aforementioned critic work where Chinweizu traces Soyinka¶s
obscurantism back to European literary norms. The Nigerian literary critic asserts
that:

Soyinka¶s obscuritantism, however, would seem more readily
explained in term of his fidelity to the Hopkinson butchery
of English syntax and semantics, and to his deliberate choice
of Shakespearean and other archaisms as models for his
poetic diction

The critical work tackles the influence of Western literary aesthetics on

African literary works. The British cultural hegemony has had considerable
consequences on African languages, especially the pidgin and Yoruba diction. In
this context, many prominent traditional writers have been criticized of the fact that
they do not fully exploit indigenous languages or they only imitate the European
literary canon. That¶s why Chinwezu, through his critical text, criticizes Soyinka
whom he classifies as a µeuromodernist¶ writer, of imitating too much European
aesthetic devices in his literary works. In fact, according to the Nigerian critic,
Soyinka¶s texts, embodying conscious message for the illiterate Nigerian masses,
can not be deciphered by these latter because of the use of Western linguistic
structure.

This critical text questions the originality of Soyinka¶s style particularly his
use of language and imagery which are very important in the Negro aesthetic
domain. This point will allow an interrogation of the motives that urged the rooted
and committed Nigerian Yoruba writer, who most of the time, champion the
revival of African oral tradition, to use European literary techniques. Chinwezu
critical article ³*   



 
)"
 
‘ which treats of Soyinka¶s
style including language and imagery will help to review these narrative techniques
in relation to Yoruba poetic arts. Consequently, a critical analysis of Soyinka¶s use
of Yoruba ritual drama through an ³7
  
"A 
 

 
   ´ will be made.
However, Wole Soyinka, although writing in English language, uses Yoruba
language and imagery in 
and c This work aims at analyzing the use of
pidgin through traditional poetry which will be dealt with in the next sub-chapter.
Parallel to, the Senegalese visual art critics such as Mamadou A. Ndiaye and
Alpha A. Sy have done much of research about the universality of art. In respect
with ideas developed in the chapter ³

?"


 "´ about the
artist¶s quest for universality posits by Mamadou Ablaye Ndiaye and Alpha
Amadou Sy in 
 
‘
 
 

$ 


>  "
Soyinka
can be put in this universal range of artist because the use of English language as a
universal mean of communication.

Contrary to ideas developed in 

 @ 



 

þ  , many other critics have carried out important researches on Soyinka, in
the view of responding to the reader¶s questions about Soyinka¶s obscure writing.
That is the case of the Nigerian literary critic Niyi Osundare in =(


c 

'  


 <
'" &!

"´ where he analyses Soyinka¶s use of
hermetic language which is a particular linguistic pattern of Yoruba tradition. He
examines the characteristics of Soyinka¶s style as modeled after ³
) 



!
 
   
 
 
"



 
&


  

  ´. This quotation refers to the diverse and complex characteristics
of Soyinka¶s style deriving from his hybrid technique of narration which include
Modernism and Yoruba language influence.
*  &c()
 Very often, African literature reflects a syncretic combination of written and
oral culture impulses that several critics of African literature recognized. The
development of modern African writings incorporates both African Negro and
Western literary traditions. Soyinka¶s  and c constitute one of those
traditional literary works which deal mainly with African Negro aesthetics
concerns. However, the traditional writings have undergone influence from
Western literary narrative techniques.
Therefore Soyinka, like his Nigerian ancestors, uses and retain the strong
oral tradition of Africa combined with the Western based literary genre. This
highlights the fact that he often gives his major characters like Demoke in 
and Sekoni in c a sense of Yoruba culture¶s preservation.
To better grasp African symbolism, especially Yoruba one, the sub chapter
dealing with language and imagery will permit to have a clear idea of hybrid
techniques that Soyinka adopts as narrative technique.
In this connection it will be interesting to analyze how both Western devices
and African language represented through pidgin are used under the consideration
to deal with socio political issues. For this purpose we will analyze some aspects of
language and imagery through code switching and tropes in both works.
In  and c, Soyinka uses a language that befit particular situations and
characters to typify them. At the same time, he shows his mastery of both Yoruba
and English languages. His use of language demonstrates his ability to arouse
strong emotions through ritual devices and render through different registers a
reproduction of Nigerian postcolonial reality. A close description of some distinct
situation can help reveal the aesthetic functions that language aims at suggesting in
the larger context of  and c. In Soyinka¶s works, both narrator and characters
freely mix English with expressions from the Yoruba language. This alternate use
of language in socio linguistics is known as code switching. Code switching is,
according to Einer Haugen, ³The alternate use of two languages, including
everything from the introduction of a single unassimilated word up to a complete
sentence or more, into the context of another language.´
Soyinka uses code switching to reflect Yoruba ideology and shows the
interaction of the natives and the colonials through the language they use. This is
transparent in the use of Pidgin English which is defined as: ³a form speech which
usually has a simplified language and a limited often mixed vocabulary and is used
principally for intergroup communication.´
Apart from the use of code switching Soyinka¶s language is characterized by
Yoruba mythic figures, words with evocative connotation imagistic, symbolic and
metaphoric dimension employed to deal with social experiences. Therefore, it
would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of tropes that are aspects of
figurative language in Soyinka¶s  and c

Concerning imagery, it is ³the use of figurative language to produce pictures

in the mind of the readers as a group´.

Among the particularities of Soyinka¶s language, especially in 
and c,

are rhetorical devices such as compound, similes, metaphors.

Compounds are generally known to be a combination of two or more

separate words. In the words of Niyi Osundare in ³Words of Iron, Sentence of
Thunder: Soyinka prose style´ in Soyinka¶s works, they are of two kinds: simple
compound and multiple compounds. Some are found in c as shown in this
example µSit-down-strike¶ (c, 76) and µDum-belly-woman¶ (, 40) in 

Apart from compounds, Soyinka uses what Osundare calls ³condensed or

indirect similes¶ . A simile is ³a word or phrase that compares something to
something else, using the words like or as´; this allows the creative write to make
an overt comparison. The following lines from c
and 
offer cases of
condensed similes: ³The beer reversed direction and Lasunwon¶s nostrils were
[like] twin nozzles of a fireman¶s hose´ (c
151
In the play, the example of
condensed similes is illustrated through this verse: ³Rola: «I suppose you
wouldn¶t like to come and lie with the/ Pack of dirty, [like the] yelling grandmas
and fleatbitten children? (, 6)

Metaphors are an integral part in Soyinka¶s language. The metaphor is ³a

rhetorical device which establishes the similarity of two unlikely things by treating
them as identical.´ It is composed of a µtenor¶ that is ³the subject to which the
metaphoric term applies´ and of a µvehicle¶ which is µthe metaphoric term applies
itself´. Besides their tendency to conceal meaning, metaphors are characterized by
their imaginative bent which is very rooted in African Negro aesthetics. This is
confirmed in     

  


   where it is written that ³the
amount of metaphors correspond to the level of creative sensitiveness and
affectivity. Without a sensitive imagination there is no metaphor.´ Like many
African writers, Soyinka went abroad to further his studies. In this atmosphere of
discovery, he comes across Modernism. It (modernism) sought to reinterpret
traditional Catholic teaching in the light of 19th century philosophical, historical,
and psychological theories and called for freedom of conscience´. Modernism
sought to put the teaching of the Church hand in hand with modern knowledge.
With regard to this rebellious attitude, Gabriel Josipovic writes in his þ 



[ 
 

#" that:

To understand it [Modernism¶s] implications«, we need to

see it as the result of and the reaction to the crisis of authority
which affected every sphere of activity in Western Europe
 and America in the late nineteenth century political,
philosophical, scientific and artistic.

According to Josipovici¶s remark, the crisis bred by the emergence of

Modernism reached every sphere, art including. The impact of the movement on
this particular field is underscored in 


#  
   " where
Modernism is synonymous with:

The method, style or attitude of modern artists«especially a

style of painting in which the artist deliberately breaks away
from classical and traditional methods of expressions; hence,
a similar style or movement in architecture, literature, music,
etc.

In literature, Modernism, as a literary movement, corresponds to the writer¶s

decision to, intentionally, divorce from the rules or the ways which govern writing.
For instance, Modernist writers tend to proceed to a fragmentation of the story
instead of adopting the traditional linear one. There is also the fractured plot and
the important use of flashbacks as well. This study shows how, through
³anachronies´, this new style appears in Soyinka¶s  and c.
Cohan and Shires defines ³anachronies´ as the ³specific points of disparity
between the temporal order of the story sequence and that of the narration´. They
are made up of ³prolepses´ and ³analepses.´ For Yves Reuter in c   


! "

 , the first ³consists in relating or in evoking in advance a
subsequent event´ whereas the second also known as µflashbacks¶, ³consists in
relating or evoking afterwards an early events.´  and c hold several
analepses.
In the play, most of the events are belatedly narrated though they should
appear earlier. Indeed, it is at the Second Part that the reader has clear
understanding of the characters¶ past crimes which they acknowledge through
ritual performance such as masquerade. Demoke a carver, Rola a whore , and
Adenebi a council orator respectively have linking expericiences in the Court of
Mata Kharibu which is located back to the eighteen century. The swift of the
setting from the present to the past is depicted through Aroni¶s magical
intervention: ³

 
 


 

 


[
. 
 


 "

 
 
  
[
.  


 
  
[

 

  
"
 .´(, p. 51)
In regard to the novel, Maduakor writes:


c  has no continuous and firmly established

story lines; it has instead, a series of apparently unrelated and
sometimes symbolic episodes featuring the major characters.
Soyinka abandons the linear narrative shuttles back and forth
as it shifts it focuses arbitrarily from the present occupations
of the major characters to their pasts, back again to the
present and, sometimes to the future.

At the outset, Soyinka thrust the reader into the present with Egbo, Sagoe,
Dehinwa, Bandele, Lasunwon, and Sekoni who meet in a night club in Lagos (c,
7) This scene is interrupted by an analepses relating Egbo¶s trip to Osa (c, 10) at
the end of which Soyinka goes back to the first scene (c, 14) before introducing
another analepses revealing Egbo¶s childhood experience (c, 16). From this stage,
the nightclub episode reappears but this time, it is interrupted by a series of
analepses: Sekoni¶s homeward voyage from Europe (c, 26), his frustration with
his job, and the misfortune befalling him following the cancellation of his plant
(c, 27-28). In his article µThe Interpreters- A Form of Criticism´ Mark Kinkead-
Weekes argues about the abrupt manner in which these analepses are presented:

Now we plunge without warning from the idealistic engineer,

dreaming on the boat home of unleashing the transforming
 power of technology on an undeveloped landscape, to the
pointless frustration of his desk job, and then to the way he is
trapped by a corrupt system into a public disgrace which
makes money for his chief and lands Sekoni in a mental
hospital.

After the flashback to Sekoni¶s past, the narrative comes again to the
nightclub gathering. Through this chapter, the reader notes the presence of several
analepses which justify the shuttle between present and past.

These observations constitute a good example of the idea of complementary

of cultures which Soyinka handles in ["
þ  
 


 
(.
They also convey his universal trend: his desire to bring all back to one single unit
in spite of culture differences and other hurdles that may exist between people and
races. As he says in 
[
  ³after all, there is only one common definition
for a people and a nation- a unit nation bound together by a common ideology.´

The fragmentation of the text in  and c is not only due to the influence
of Modernism but also to the contrast between present and past realities as well as
the impact of Yoruba concept of time as illustrated in c. However, it is worth
noting that Soyinka uses the modernist techniques of narration mainly to express
his opposition to the current Nigerian political atmosphere: corruption,
dictatorship, and injustice. Just as modernist writers deviate from the standard rules
of narration to protest against the then evolution of the world in general so does
Soyinka with the Nigerian political environment. This is achieved especially
thanks to the fragmented narrative found in  and c

The fact that Soyinka¶s writing is influenced by his own experience may not
be surprising because as Virginia Woolf writes ³novels are not rooted in a
preconceived plan or method but in hidden parts of the author¶s own life.
Consequently, the manner an African writer narrates incidents in a literary work
can be based on occurrences encountered in African Negro Aesthetics.

By and large, Soyinka¶s literary works are often marked by the use of
English language style mixed with indigenous languages.

* D c'%

The use of imagery is very specific in Soyinka¶s works in so far as his

metaphors encompass images of his own mythology. That is why, his inserting
elements pertaining to Yoruba culture makes the non- Yoruba readers go to great
pains before grasping his ideas. However, Soyinka literary works succeed in
dealing with socio political issues through the use of native language which is
characterized mainly through poetry.

Concerning poetic language, it is not only found in c; it is also present in

his play . It can play the role of proverbs as in Agboreko¶s advising the old
man to be patient. In other word, the virtues of patience are valued in this example:

The eye that looks down will certainly see the nose. The hand
that deeps to the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
The sky grows no grass but if the earth called her barren, it
will drink no more milk. The foot of the snake is not split in
two like a man¶s, in hundreds like the centripede but if Ajere
could dance patiently like the snake, he will uncoil the chain
that leads into the dead«(, 29)

According to Omole, Standard English is the basic language in which c is

narrated. However, Soyinka often uses words or sentences pertaining to other
language such as pidgin and Yoruba. The conversation of the taxi-driver with
Sagoe highlights the presence of pidgin in his language:
 Taxi-driver: ³Where you wan go for Obalende?
Sagoe: ³To the police station´
Taxi-driver: ³Oga mi, hm, so even Nigeria
Police no fit arrest this foolish rain´. (c, 109)

These three instances of code switching from English to pidgin are

significant. In Omole¶s words, they underline the diversity of social in c. There
uneducated people like Mathias, Greenbottle, and the taxi driver who express
themselves in pidgin which is qualified as ³the language of uneducated
businessmen, messengers, and many unskilled workers´. Alongside them, stand
such other individuals as Sagoe and Chief Winsala who have reached a certain
level of education; in sum they belong to the intelligentsia which speak standard
English.

Another case of code switching (shift from English to Yoruba) focuses on

Chief Winsala¶s monologue consequent to his quarrel with Greenbottle:

Agba n¶t¶ ara«it is no matter for rejoicing when a child sees

his farther naked, l¶ogolonto. Agba n¶t¶ ara the wise eunuch
keeps from women, the hungry clerk dous coast over his
narrow belt and who will says his belly is flat? But when
elgungun is unmasked in the market, can he then ask egbe to
snatch him into the safety of igbale? Won¶t they tell him the
grove is meant only for keepers of mystery? Agba n¶t¶ ara.
When the Bal borrows a horse tail he sends a menial; so
when the servant comes back empty handed he can say, Did I
send you? The adulterer makes assignation in a room with
one exit, is he not asking to feed his scrotum to the fishes of
Ogun? Agba n¶t¶ ara« (, pp. 91- 92).
 Through this paragraph, Soyinka gives an example of code switching from
English to Yoruba. For Omole, this code switching ³is indeed a good example of
what Traugott and Pratt call situational code switching, a switching motivated by
embarrassment and belated self consciousness´. In the glossary to c
µAgba n¶t¶
ara¶ means respect for an elderly body, µelegungun¶ is an ancestral masquerade,
and µigbale¶ grave of exclusive cults. For Omole, the interest of this paragraph lays
on two facts. The fist is connected to the recurrent use of µAgba n¶t¶ ara¶ by Chief
Winsala. It displays the intensity of shame for he knows that owing to his age he
deserves more respect. The second is related to the metaphorical feature of the
code switching as shown in the words µelegungun¶ and µigbale¶. Winsala knows
that he is on the verge of being exposed physically and morally (l¶ongoloto). He is
also aware that his subterfuge (like elegungun) will be publicly uncovered and that
even his cult (igbale) cannot save him.

Still, among the specifities of Soyinka¶s traditional language, there is the use
of punctuation. In  and mostly in c, the reader encounters sentences which
are not punctuated or others which are not µnormally¶ punctuated. In the first case,
it is stress through the Ant Leader¶s to the Forest Head:

Ant Leader: Freedom indeed we have

To choose our path

To turn to the left or the right

Like Spider in the sand pit

And the great ball of eggs

Pressing on his back.(, 78)

 In the novel, a typical example of unpunctuated sentence is highlighted
through this passage:

Pinkshore knew all about the professor and deans and registrars
and the chancellors vice pro and real and senate councilors and
chairman and their families down to the most intimate detail and
he knew the simple fact that professor Oguazor had three sons
and one five years old daughter gave him much sorrow and pain
because he could not publicly acknowledge her he had her by
the housemaid and the poor girl was tucked away in private
school in Islington and in fact was Oguazor¶s favourite child and
the plastic apple of his eye«so it was obvious to him that Sagoe
an impostor who had come to steal the silver and it was a good
thing to perform small services for this new black elite which he
secretly despised but damned it at all if the asses are susceptible
to fawning and flattery let¶s give it them and get what we can
out of them while the going is good. (c, 149)

In this passage relating Sagoe¶s presence to the party organized by the

Oguazors, there is no elements of punctuation be the commas, semicolons, colons,
or even periods. This absence causes problems of understanding to the reader. This
failure to punctuate sentences in Soyinka¶s literary works, in general, can be
explained by two main factors.

Firstly, there is the state of possession to which the oral performer or the
actor on the stage is subjected to a as previous outlined. Secondly, and in
correlation with the first, there is the fact that, as Osundare underscores, ³many of
Soyinka¶s sentences are psychological sentences, not guided by the grammar book
rubric or punctuation with its rigid commas and full stops, but directed by the
pulses of the mind and the rhythm of consciousness.´ With regard to Osundare¶s
comment, Soyinka¶s lack of punctuation can be link to French Surrealism which is
³pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, verbally, in writing,
or by other means, the real process of thought.´

In the second case, that is sentences which are not dully punctuated, they can
be labeled as hyperbaton. In c   

! "
"   , Catherine
Fromilhague and Anne Sancier Chateau define the term as a device that ³places out
of the syntactic group a term which should be part of it.´ This applied to  and
c as shown in these lines:

Demoke:«sometimes I merely trace patterns on

wood. With fire.( , 18)

Adenebi:..And this could have been a profitable

season. A generous season.(, 34)

I once worked in a library. In Paris. (c, 188)

I¶ve been to several European countries and human

beings are still the same. Boring. Insincere.( c, 190)

Here also µfire¶ and µA generous season¶ are isolated for a matter of
emphasis. These rejections are found in poetry with the technique of run on line
also known as enjambment which moves apart one or several words to the next
verse whereas syntactically and semantically they complete the previous. There is
also, in Soyinka¶s works, the influence of Yoruba vocabulary such as ³Agidigbo´
and ³apala´ which means a kind of Yoruba music.

Soyinka¶s language can be studied through various stylistic aspects.

However, this should not prevent us from analyzing the impact of his cultural
symbolism on his language which is one of African Negro aesthetic aspect.
However, African Negro symbolism differs from European one in so far as the
former does not follow the Western logic. In fact, Negro symbolism ³ does not
mean what it represents, but what it suggests, what it creates.´ From this
perspective, we can have an understanding of Soyinka¶s symbolism which is
grounded on Yoruba folklore.
To put in a nutshell, Soyinka has succeed in merging two kind of language
from different cultures, which are British and Yoruba, to convey post Nigerian
thematic aspects. Indo European languages, mainly based on Greek civilization,
are considered as languages deem to be used in different scales of social activities.
By contrast to African language, it has its specific linguistic framework composed
of syntax, figures of speech, linguistic idiosyncrasies which are thought to be more
adaptable in literature. On the other hand, Soyinka has demonstrated the relevant
utilization of African diction, mainly Yoruba one, through  and c
as able to
deal with postcolonial issues.
Pidgin generally sounds queer in the ear of the alienated people; hence its
functional role is the most questioned by some Eurocentric scholars. That is why,
the Yoruba writer utilizes Yoruba language in his texts to show its importance as
well as in the indigenous societies but also its implication in political activities. In
other words, Soyinka¶s use of hybrid technique of narration is significant in so far
as it permits to acknowledge the complementary aspect of cultures.
Besides, Soyinka chooses to tackle his text with his own language in order to
make the natives to easily identify themselves in their traditional origin rooted in
mythology, ritual performance and domestic policies. In ³Wole Soyinka and A
Living Dramatist: A Playwright¶s Encounter with Soyinka¶s Drama´, Femi
Osofian asserts that ³ Soyinka had found the ingenious solution of making his
English indigenous to the listening ear, in such a way that his characters still
retained their authenticity, and the locus of the action remained identifiable
African´.
 

  c


This study has displayed the basis of Wole Soyinka¶s commitment to
deconstruct negative stereotypical portrayals of African Negro aesthetics. He alters
considerations that perceive Black aesthetics as decorative and promote it as
playing essential roles. Subsequently, we become aware of some traditional
artworks depiction.
Those Yoruba traditional items reveal the use of authentic artistic material as
themes and narrative techniques. Those literary aesthetic devices, including mainly
archetypal characterization, Yoruba traditional art forms such as songs, sculpture
and painting are religious and political responses to racist Western hegemonic
culture and African new elite¶s greediness. In the traditional and the political
levels, Soyinka has striven to deconstruct racist Eurocentric thought regarding to
African tradition in
 and c. These literary works constitute striking symbols
of Soyinka¶s Yoruba traditional themes and aesthetics.

Soyinka moves to retrieve and chant Yoruba culture in so far as his works
can be viewed through several aspects. In the aesthetic perspective, characters such
as Yoruba supernatural beings and the living people share the same universe with
the mediation of traditional aesthetics which plays an essential role because it
ensures social harmony. Such a social idealism shows the effectiveness of Black
aesthetics which is materialized through Yoruba tradition. Soyinka emphasizes in
 and c the essential presence of Yoruba artworks without which tragedy and
drama cannot be performed.

Yoruba artworks are depicted, in Soyinka¶s literary works, through three

aesthetic categories namely visual, poetic and performed arts.

Visual arts composed of sculpture or carving and painting upholding a

sacred role are recurrently employed as narrative devices in  and c. For
Yoruba social hierarchy, Soyinka¶s characters such as Demoke and Sekoni occupy
considerable place since they incarnate the spirits¶ power. They are viewed as
historical and religious conservators. In fact, their sculptural artworks are
considered as spiritual in Yoruba traditional beliefs. Concerning plastic arts such as
painting, Soyinka depicts it as capable to convey the collective consciousness and
the religious beliefs of one ethnic group as it is illustrated through Kola¶s Pantheon
in c

Moreover, poetic arts are considered by the Yoruba playwright and novelist
Soyinka to be the core of African Negro aesthetics. In fact, Soyinka uses poetic
arts to portray Yoruba ritual drama. Music, which is materialized through the
traditional material drums, does not only convey melody as for Western musical
tools but emphasize on the Negro sensuality: the rhythm.

There are many cases of performed masquerades, in  and c, with basic
artistic materials such as masks, music and dance. In this context, the performer is
no longer considered as a simple living person but a spirit. Hence, Soyinka, in his
novels and drama works, uses ³elegungun´ (Yoruba masquerade) to show the
religious importance of African Negro tools.

All in all, through this survey, we have a deep insight in the traditional art
forms such as carving, painting, poetry and masquerade used as narrative structure
by the Yoruba writer in his writings. These traditional narrative techniques are
interwoven with the plot, whose themes are grounded in the Yoruba world and the
Nigerian postcolonial context.

On the one hand, Soyinka uses art to awake black consciousness regarding
to their changing society under Western culture influence and to help African to be
grounded on their cultural values. The Nigerian playwright has relentlessly
struggled against assimilation which goes with a disdain of tradition conveyed
through cultural values. Some of his characters face a dilemma, having to choose
between their ancestor¶s heritage and the material values from Western countries.
However, Soyinka suggests responses to cultural dilemma through the his
traditional theory the ³Fourth stage´ which can be considered as a means to
struggle against cultural domination and the new leaders¶ greediness.

Moreover, Soyinka¶s use of hybrid language composed mainly of English

and Pidgin pertain many of his literary works. The mix of this different language is
not fortuitous because it has permitted to show the complementary aspect of
Western and African aesthetics. This work has permitted to show Soyinka¶s handle
of diverse language through his text to convey socio-political issues which are very
rooted in postcolonial Nigerian.

One the other hand, this study allows us to give ways out to postcolonial
concerns embodied by a corrupted ruling class and an illiterate working class. In
this context, the artist is expected to play the role of a critical analyst and
interpreter of the changing Nigerian society in order to find new solutions to the
socio-political and cultural turmoil. Though Soyinka does not grant radical
responses to postcolonial issues as the Nigerian and South African writers Chinua
Achebe and Alex La Guma have done in their literary works, the Yoruba
playwright posits essentially African Negro aesthetics as a means of resistance to
Western indoctrination.
 

c c+



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()%

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