Distinguished scholars analyze the plays, poetry, and prose of Wole Smoyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. Essays trace his career and place his work in the general context of African literature.

A broad introduction to the works of the Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian writer and the varieties of criticism they have elicited. There are many different critical methodologies represented, ranging from those concerned with verbal texture (linguistic, structural, and textual approaches) to those focusing on cultural context (historical, mythological, and comparative studies). Most of the articles were originally published in Research in African Literatures. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Essays that examine the aesthetics and the radical politics of one of Africa's greatest writers

This timely and expansive biography of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer, Nobel laureate, and social activist, shows how the author's early years influence his life's work and how his writing, in turn, informs his political engagement. Three sections spanning his life, major texts, and place in history, connect Soyinka's legacy with global issues beyond the borders of his own country, and indeed beyond the African continent. Covering his encounters with the widespread rise of kleptocratic rule and international corporate corruption, his reflection on the human condition of the North-South divide, and the consequences of postcolonialism, this comprehensive biography locates Wole Soyinka as a global figure whose life and works have made him a subject of conversation in the public sphere, as well as one of Africa's most successful and popular authors. Looking at the different forms of Soyinka's work--plays, novels, and memoirs, among others--this volume argues that Soyinka used writing to inform, mobilize, and sometimes incite civil action, in a decades-long attempt at literary social engineering.

Biodun Jeyifo examines the connections between the innovative and influential writings of Wole Soyinka and his radical political activism. Jeyifo carries out detailed analyses of Soyinka's most ambitious works, relating them to the controversies generated by Soyinka's use of literature and theatre for radical political purposes. He gives a fascinating account of the profound but paradoxical affinities and misgivings Soyinka has felt about the significance of the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. Jeyifo also explores Soyinka's works with regard to the impact on his artistic sensibilities of the pervasiveness of representational ambiguity and linguistic exuberance in Yoruba culture. The analyses and evaluations of this study are presented in the context of Soyinka's sustained engagement with the violence of collective experience in post-independence, postcolonial Africa and the developing world. No existing study of Soyinka's works and career has attempted such a systematic investigation of their complex relationship to politics.

This book presents a new way of looking at Wole Soyinka's engagement with the classical past. Nigerian author and activist Wole Soyinka was the first Black African author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1986), and his oeuvre has become seminal to postcolonial literature. The frequent references to Greece and Rome that appear across Soyinka's writings, most explicitly in his 1973 play The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite, have often received short shrift in scholarship on the author. At best, these references have been understood as elements of Soyinka's prodigiously inclusive humanism. At worst, Soyinka's critics argue that the invocations of a Graeco-Roman past testify to the neocolonial cultural affinities that make Soyinka a problematic figure in postcolonial literary history. Adam Lecznar challenges these readings, arguing that Soyinka's authorial outlook is informed by a hybrid form of classicism in which he aligns the legacy of Greece and Rome with the African cultural heritage to form a narrative of literary and cultural value that looks beyond the ancient Mediterranean. This book turns a spotlight on how Soyinka's appeals to Greece and Rome inform his reflections on Africa's ancient past, Yoruba belief, and the modern significance of tragedy. Lecznar contends that Soyinka's notion of classicism is not solely dependent on the memory of the Graeco-Roman past. Rather, it draws innovatively on a global cultural heritage to advance revolutionary and futural narratives of history and identity.

From St. Augustine and early Ethiopian philosophers to the anti-colonialist movements of Pan-Africanism and Negritude, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive view of African thought, covering the intellectual tradition both on the continent in its entirety and throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The term "African thought" has been interpreted in the broadest sense to embrace all those forms of discourse - philosophy, political thought, religion, literature, important social movements - that contribute to the formulation of a distinctive vision of the world determined by or derived from the African experience. The Encyclopedia is a large-scale work of 350 entries covering major topics involved in the development of African Thought including historical figures and important social movements, producing a collection that is an essential resource for teaching, an invaluable companion to independent research, and a solid guide for further study.

Radical Humanism and Generous Tolerance articulates the religious ideas and vision of Wole Soyinka in his non-fiction writings. It also analyzes Soyinka's response to religious violence, terror, and the fear of religious imperialism. The book suggests the theoretical notions of radical humanism and generous tolerance best summarize Soyinka's religious ideals and religious piety. Through a close reading of Soyinka's religious works, the book argues that African traditional religions could be used as a catalyst to promote religious tolerance and human solidarity, and that they may also contribute to the preservation of life, and the fostering of an ethics of care and relationality. Soyinka brings in conversation Western Humanist tradition and African indigenous Humanist tradition for the sake of the world, for the sake of global shalom, and for the sake of human flourishing.