TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……….………………………….………………ii
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………1
Chapter 1: Review of Literature…………………………………………….7
Chapter 2: Characterisation…………………………………………………13
2.1The Yoruba supernatural beings……………………………………………14
2.2 The living people………………………………………………………….15
Chapter 3: the Different Forms of Yoruba Traditional Art ………………17
3.1 Visual arts…………………………………………………………………17
3.2 Poetic and Music arts………………………………………………………18
3.3 Performing arts……………………………………………………………18
Chapter 4: The Thematic and Symbolic Aspects …………………………20
4.1 Critical realism……………………………………………………………20
4.1.1 Dialectical Marxism…………………………………………………….21
4.1.2 Morality and the Yoruba aesthetics…………………………………….22
4.2 Language and imagery…………………………………………………….24
4.2.1 Yoruba language influence……………………………………………...25
4.2.2 The symbolic of humane beings and natural elements………………….26

CONCLUSION..................................................................................................28
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………....31

INTRODUCTION
 The history of Art has been entrenched with discriminatory assumptions
from the hegemonic Westerners 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. But, according to African intellectuals such the Senegalese poet
Leopold Sedar Senghor, these “Eurocentric 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”1. Besides, Black
people, who were stereotyped as ‘primitive 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: “In the domain of visual art like in others, the quantifier African has a
negative connotation.”2
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. 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 an uncultured and unrefined human being, 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 “African-American New Negro”3 movement created in 1925. This
1Léopold Sedar Senghor. Liberté I, Négritude et Humanisme (Paris : Edition du Seuil, 1974), p.2.

2Mamadou Alpha Ndiaye & Alpha Amadou Sy. African Negro Aesthetics and the Quest for Universality (Dakar:
Nouvelles du Sud, 2007), p.57.

3Alain Locke. The New Negro, Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company,
1992), p.150.
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. In fact, African
intellectuals, in order to counter colonial discourses and enhance Negro culture,
decide to readapt the Negro creed “Black Aesthetics” in African realities. In this
respect, the Senegalese poet Léopold Sedar Senghor coins in Liberté I,
Negritude et Humanisme “African Negro Aesthetics”4 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 “sacred Oriki (praise-chants)”5,
is very 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. Born Akinwande Oluwale Soyinka in 1934, the artist and
an activist posits that writing and politics are interwoven. In fact, he painfully
realizes that, while resisting to 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 cultural self alienation and political
commitment he writes literary works such as the ritual dramatic work A Dance
of the Forests6 published in 1960 and the novel The Interpreters7 in 1965. In
4Leopold Sedar Senghor, op. cit, p.2

5Wole Soyinka. Myth, Literature and the African World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p.5.

6 . A Dance of the Forests (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963).

7 . The Interpreters (London : André Deutsch, 1965).

fact, Soyinka 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 A Dance of
the Forests and The Interpreters. Besides, the survey of these artistic devices
will permit to show social and political impact on either on the characters or the
audience.
In A Dance of the Forests, Soyinka depicts Yoruba belief which is
transmitted through ritual drama. For the Yoruba, the notion of space, time and
traditional themes are linked and is characterized through the coexistence of
past, present and future generation. Hence, Soyinka, in the play, 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 status, 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 ‘Fourth stage’8 which, according to
Soyinka, can redeem the profaner and permits him to better master his
destructive and creative power. The performer’s resulting state of mind, after the
fourth space crossing, is the ability, for the characters, to control their binary
opposite force (destructive and creative) which is repetitive for all generations
and races. 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 obscenities through the interaction between Yoruba archetypal mythic
figures such as Ogun, the revolutionary and creative deity and human
community’s living people. For the playwright, it is through this ritual

8 .op. cit. p.148.

enactment of self discovery that human being can be aware of his condition in
order to better face socio-political problems
The Interpreters is a satiric work about Nigeria postcolonial context where
traditional heritage and domestic policy are mismanaged due to Colonialism
influence. 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 try to make sense of their life. Hence, the characters Sekoni and
Kola, sculptor and painter, try to detached 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
“Wrestler”. Besides, The Interpretersis the portrayal of a the experience of a
group of young Nigerian intellectuals who decide to detached from the ignorant
working class in order to interpret Nigerian social and political realities. Hence,
Soyinka considers the “The 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
artiste. 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 A
Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters, Soyinka makes use of
postmodernism which questions the principal of the authenticity of Yoruba ritual
drama and artworks.
 The purpose of the study is to analyse African Negro Aesthetics features
and its social and political functions in Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests and
The Interpreters. Hence it will permit to arise questionings that constitute the
main parts of our survey. The first chapter is devoted to the review of literature.
In this part, a number of critical works are reconsidered in order to have a
general overview of what has already been written concerning our issue. The
second chapter will permit to display the archetypal characterisation of
Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters which are grounded on
Yoruba mythic vision. In the third chapter, we will examine the different Yoruba
artworks such as painting and sculpture, traditional poetry and performing arts
used by Soyinka as narrative techniques. Finally, the third chapter will analyse
the essential role of either the Yoruba artists or their ritual artworks and Yoruba
symbolism that Soyinka uses to in his literary works. The answers of those
interrogations will permit to determine African aesthetics similarities or
differences between Negritude and Tigritude trends. In fact, Soyinka as the
leader of this latter tendency, criticises the prominent “Messiah of Negritude
Senghor to not enough explore African Negro aesthetics”9 though he coins the
latter term. Besides, such a survey is an attempt to show the efficacy of African
Negro aesthetics through Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters.

CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF LITERATURE

This chapter is a panoramic view of what have been written about Wole
Soyinka and the representation of art in his writings. Many researches related to
our study have been conducted, ranging from essays, articles to book. The first
source Toward the Decolonization of African Literature, 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

9Wole Soyinka.op. cit. p. 135.

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 10
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 Chinweizu, through his critical text,
criticizes Soyinka whom he classifies as a ‘euromodernist’11 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.
Chinweizu critical article “Criticism of African Poetry and Novel” which treats
of Soyinka’s style including language and imagery will help to review these
10Chinweizu Ibekwe, “Criticism of African Poetry and Novel” in Toward the Decolonization of African
Literature (London:Howard University Press, 1983), p.156.

11Ibid., p .172.
narrative techniques in relation to Yoruba poetic arts. Consequently, a critical
analysis of Soyinka’s use of Yoruba ritual drama through an “old-fashioned,
craggy…obscure and inaccessible diction”12 will be made.
However, Wole Soyinka, although writing in English language, uses
Yoruba language and imagery in A Dance of the Forests and The
Interpreters.This work aims at analyzing the use of pidgin through traditional
poetry which will be dealt with in the second 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 “On the trajectory of universality”13 about the artist’s quest for
universality posits by Mamadou Ablaye Ndiaye and Alpha Amadou Sy in
African Negro Aesthetics and the Quest for Universality, 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 Toward the Decolonization of African
Literature, 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 “Word
of Iron, Sentence of Thunder: Soyinka’s prose style” where he analyses
Soyinka’s use of hermetic language which is a particular linguistic pattern of
Yoruba tradition14. He examines the characteristics of Soyinka’s style as
modelled after “the Pantheon of god’s, and supernatural beings and archetypal
characters that people his work in recurring fashion”15. This quotation refers to
the diverse and complex characteristics of Soyinka’s style deriving from Yoruba
traditional symbolism and imagery.

12Chinweizu Ibekwe, op. cit, p.159

13Mamadou Alpha Ndiaye & Alpha Amadou Sy, op. cit, p.70

14Niyi Osundare. “Words of Iron, Sentence of Thunder: Soyinka’s Prose Style’ in African Literature Today
Recent Trends in the Novel (London: Heinemann, 1983).

15Niyi Osundare. op. cit, p 7

 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 A
Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters 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.
In their mythology, the Yoruba give him several attributes among which we can
mention the promethean spirit used by Soyinka in A Dance of the Forests and
The Interpreters. Osundare draws parallelism between some of the deities and
his characters which are employed as archetypal narrative devices. Besides,
Osundare deals with issue about the religious link between the Yoruba divine
figures and the human community. Soyinka posits that “the reference to Yoruba
gods is very essential in Yoruba religion”16 which is one of the prominent aspect
of African Negro Aesthetics.
In the same way, Leopold Sedar Senghor notices in Liberté I, Negritude et
Humanisme that “the Negro has established a rigorous hierarchy of Forces”17.
The Senegalese poet refers “Forces” to the supernatural beings such as the
Ancestors’ spirits that cohabit with living people. This literary work as an
advantage combining the thematic as well as the aesthetic aspect of Soyinka’s
concerns dealt with in his novel. This is illustrated through the sacred belief of
the Yoruba human community regarding to the deities embodied by Soyinka’s
ritual traditional theory, the “Fourth 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 A Dance of the Forests and
The Interpreters.

16Wole Soyinka. Myth, Literature and the African World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p.
122.

17Léopold Sedar Senghor. Liberté I, Négritude et Humanisme (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1974, p .2.) [Le Négre a
élablit une hierarchie rigoureuse de Forces] This is my own translation, this will be the case for the subsequent
French quotations found in this work.
 Moreover, the critic William Harris displays in “The Complexity of
Freedom” the Yoruba mythological issue through the belief of a “transition from
the human to the divine essence” 18
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 permit 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 “prepare us for a Quest which is ‘part psychic, part intellectual grope”19.
Indeed, in Yoruba society, education and religion are interwoven with Nigerian
folklore through mythic aspect; hence, the importance of their application by
Wole Soyinka in A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters.
Our work will also spotlight on the traditional archetypal characterization
in Soyinka’s literary output. In relation with African Negro aesthetics,
characterization in Soyinka’s works is very suggestive in Yoruba traditional
folklore. In The Interpreters, the painter Kola tries to identify his friends with
the diverse ‘Orinsha’ (deities) in his pantheon. Through masquerade
performance in A Dance of the Forests, the characters soul communicates with
spirits which possesses their own soul, according to Soyinka. That’s why for
African, 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.
Postmodernist fragmented style is bedrock in Soyinka’s literary works and
this is asserted by Femi Osofian through these words: “Soyinka’s aesthetics is

18.Willson Harris. “ The Complexity of Freedom,”in Wole Soyinka an Appraisal (Oxford: Heinemann
Educational Publishers, 1994), p.26.

19Ibid., p.27.
not just one uniform, monolithic thing, but quite a diversity of styles.”20In 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 “transitional abyss”
21
where the characters have to cross for their redemption and their self-
realization which symbolizes Black consciousness.
The interest of Osofian’s article is it helps highlight the different
traditional narrative devices such as dance, dirge songs and masquerades used
by Soyinka and which will be treated in the framework of traditional artwork
forms. 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 A Dance of the
Forests.
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 “The Fiction of Wole
Soyinka”22, particularly that of The Interpreters. 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.
In other words, Gurnah wants to bring 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 The
Interpreters, this can be illustrated through these words of the character Sagoe
addressed to his friends Kola and Bandele:

20Femi Osofian, “Wole Soyinka and a Living Dramatist” in The Writing of Wole Soyinka (London: Heinemann,
1988), p.53.

21Wole Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p.
140.

22Abdulrazak Gurnah, op. cit, p. 74.

 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.
(The Interpreters, 238)
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.
Concisely, African literature, including oral literature has been a means
for African writers to examine and affirm African cultural values and to resist to
Eurocentric thread on African society. In fact, while European views of literature
often stress on separation of art and content, African one 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 A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters.
In Liberté I, Negritude et Humanisme Senghor confirms, in these line, the
authenticity and the re-awakening of African Negro aesthetics:
The Twenty 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 on Europe
began to discover, step by step, tales, poetry,
music, painting, philosophy.23

23Léopold Sedar Senghor, op. cit, p. 202. [Le 20e siècle restera celui de la découverte de la Civilisation Négro-
africaine. De l’Afrique Noire, ce fut d’abord la sculpture qui provoqua la stupeur, le scandale, puis l’admiration.
Mais voici que l’Europe découvre, tour à tour, le conte, la poésie, la musique, la peinture, la philosophie]
 CHAPTER 2: CHARACTERIZATION
This chapter reviews Soyinka’s use of African Negro aesthetics in his
literary output. Aesthetics, defined in The Columbia Encyclopedia, is a “subject
derived from philosophy dealing with the concern of art criterion and the way
that it would be interpreted.”24 In this respect, 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 A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters.
Characterization, defined in The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
as “action or process of characterizing, especially the portrayals of human
characters in novels, plays...”25is used by Soyinka in relation with the Yoruba
notion of cosmology which is very important regarding to Yoruba view of the
world creation genesis. 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 ‘essence ideal’ around whose edges
man fearfully skirts26
The characters in Soyinka’s literary works are traditionally conceived so
that to better makes 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 A Dance of the Forests and The
interpreters. In this context, the playwright’s cosmic setting encompassing

24The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2008) p. 47

25A.P. Cowie, The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Fourth Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992), p.147.

26Wole Soyinka. op. cit. p.1

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

2.1. The Yoruba Supernatural Beings

The African traditional religious figures are mainly composed of deities,
spirits and the Dead. However, Yoruba deities are more present in Soyinka’s
works through the most visible one that is Ogun, the Promethean god.
The most visible one representing the tragedy of the Yoruba Pantheon is
Ogun. In their mythology, the Yoruba give him several attributes; some of them
are present in A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters. In Yoruba
mythology, the gods and man were formerly separated by a void known as
“abyss of transition.”27 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 The Interpreters, Ogun Promethean spirit is embodied by Sekoni; it is

impelled by his desire to construct infrastructures which will improve the lot of
his people. Sekoni upheavals against the cancellation of Ijioha village’s power
station by the corrupted boss. His frustration release is shown in the description
the narrator gives of the carving “The 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. (The Interpreters, 99)
Besides, in A Dance of the Forests, there is character such as the carver
Demoke who incarnates Ogun’s revolting power through the carving of “araba
tree” (A Dance, 28), hence, Ogun stands for the god of the artists. The novel’s
and the play’s characters are one of the human community representatives in
Soyinka’s literary output.
27Wole Soyinka. op. cit. p. 148.
 2.2 The Living People
The authentic Negro artist has to experience the crossing of the “abyss of
transition”, which is Yoruba tragic and dramatic narrative technique in Soyinka’s
works, in order to transmit his resulting restless feeling through artworks. In
this context, the “abyss of transition” is bridged by the protagonists in A Dance
of the Forests like the carver Demoke.
A Dance of the Forests is ritual drama in that it combines issues as
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 according it is creative or destructive.
Demoke, which power is endowed by the creative god Ogun, is aware of his
destructive power and is propelled toward redemption in Soyinka’s A Dance of
the Forests. Therefore, Demoke stands for the hope that Nigerian were
expecting to find solution to Nigerian sociopolitical hardships.
In The Interpreters, Egbo 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 (The
Interpreters, 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.(The Interpreters, 236)
Supernatural beings and human community are therefore very meaningful
as oral tradition in Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters. The
gulf which separates the deities and the living people represented through
Soyinka’s “abyss of transition” is expressed through elements of African Negro
aesthetics, especially the use of Yoruba ritual artworks as narrative devices.
Besides, the symbiosis of the world of the living and the supernatural as
techniques of characterization in the view of suggesting the political and social
upheavals in post independent Nigerian, but also of expressing hope for a better
future.
 CHAPTER 3: THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF YORUBA TRADITIONAL
ART

In A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters, 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.
3.1 Visual Arts
As it name suggests, visual arts are the whole artworks composed mainly
of sculpture and painting. One of the striking illustrations in A Dance of the
Forests and The Interpreters are Demoke and Sekoni’s carving and Kola’s
painting the Pantheon of Yoruba deities.
Through the use of visual arts as narrative devices in works, 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
(A Dance, 28). On the other hand, Yoruba art forms have to symbolize “the
sublime aesthetic joy”28 which is pure expression of the artist’s sensuality while
crossing the “abyss of transition”. 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. Hence, Kola realizing he is not an artist, asserts: “I’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”. (The Interpreters, 227)

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

28Wole Soyinka, op. cit, p.150

 3.2 Poetic and Music Arts
Oral tradition is deeply marked by the poetic and music arts. These latter
including ritual songs and its instrumentals such as drums, flutes, are very
symbolic in African Negro aesthetics. Soyinka’s poetic language is testified in
The Interpreters through the language which Sekoni’s dreams are narrated (p.
26); it goes beyond reality to reach fantasy. In A Dance of the Forests, Soyinka
uses poetic and music arts such as Agboreko’s proverbs and The Dirge-man’s
poetic mourn. Poetic and music arts used as narrative devices by Soyinka,
embody Yoruba mythic beliefs such as the tragedy of the god Ogun and are
specified through these words: “Tragic music is an echo from that void; the
celebrant speaks, sings, and dances in authentic archetypal images from within
the abyss.”29
A Dance of the Forests constitute an example of Soyinka’s aforementioned
quotation. In fact, the ‘celebrant’ refers to the dirge man who sings and dances
for the welcoming of the Dead couple with the accompaniment of ‘music’
represented through the drum and flute’s rhythm in the second part of the play.
Visual and poetic arts are very recurrent in A Dance of the Forests and
The Interpreters, and their mixture enactment refers to performing arts.
3.3 Performing Arts
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 A Dance of the Forests,
Soyinka adopts Yoruba masquerade called “elgungun” as narrative device
through “mask –motif”30 of the three mortals such as Demoke, Rola, and
Adenebie “passivity state of mind” while they are reliving their past crimes (A
Dance, 63). However, the use of Soyinka’s performing arts dance is present in

29Wole Soyinka, op. cit, p. 148

30William S. Haney II, ‘Soyinka’s Ritual Drama : Unity, Postmodernism, and the Mistake of the Intellect’ in
Research in African Literature ( Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990), p.22
The Interpreters. It is illustrated through the dancer in the night club who is
“Owolebi of the squelching orange” (The Interpreters, 122).
Oral tradition, mainly Yoruba traditional art is very recurrent in Soyinka’s
early works such as A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters. Yoruba
traditional art is composed of visual arts such as painting and sculpture; poetic
dirge and music arts, and performing arts mainly masquerade and dance.
However, these traditional artworks used by Soyinka as narrative devices
embody thematic and symbolic aspect related to Nigerian socio-political
realities.
 CHAPTER 4: THEMATIC AND SYMBOLIC ASPECTS
A last attempt in this study will constitute an evaluation of the main theme
and symbolism of Soyinka’s literary production which is entrenched in Yoruba
mythology and ritual drama. In fact, 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 “uncorrupted 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 “no
man’s land of transition”, involving the
“annihilation” or “distortion” of self.31
Hence, A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters are adopted as the “no
man’s land of transition” which the protagonists have to cross so that they may
change their socio-political condition.
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. However, Soyinka has a particular use of these
literary components which are mainly applied in Nigerian postcolonial and
Yoruba traditional literary works. In the purpose to better cover thematic and
symbolic aspect, we are going first to analyze Dialectical Marxism
characteristics in A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters, then to display its
language and imagery.
4.1 Critical Realism
Critical Realism in Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters
is characterized through Dialectical Marxism and Yoruba aesthetic morality.

31Stewart Crehan. “ The Spirit of Negation in the Works of Soyinka” in Research in African Literature
(Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 16.
 4.1.1Dialectical Marxism
As underlined in The Columbia Encyclopedia, dialectical Marxism,
known also as dialectical materialism, is:
A theory which basic tenets are that everything
which material and change takes places through
the “struggle of opposition”… Central to
historical materialism is the belief that change
takes place through the meeting of the two
opposite forces (thesis and antithesis).32
However, Soyinka has a particular adoption of dialectical Marxism in A
Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters. In fact, in Soyinka’s work dialectical
materialism is “…less dialectical, more destructive in its contempt for those
elites and institutions to which the committed artist finds himself naturally
opposed.”33
Actually, instead of trying to trigger new projects 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 The Interpreters, Soyinka’s satirical portrayal is the chairman of
Sekoni’s board (The Interpretres, 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.
As for A Dance of the Forests, Soyinka adopts dialectical materialism in
the historic perspective. In the play, dialectical Marxism is symbolized through
the confrontation between the monarchy symbolized by the King Mata Kharibu

32William Bridgewater and Seymour Kurtz. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition (Columbia: Columbia
University Press, 1963), p. 568.

33Stewart Crehan. op. cit, p. 17.

and the Queen Madame Tortoise and their subjects characterized through the
Warrior. The corrupted Court Physician tries to reason the Captain who
confronts the King Mata Kharibu:
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 (A Dance, 55-56)
The need to change conscious urges Soyinka to question inglorious
historical events which. It is illustrated by S. Haney through these 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
change34
For Soyinka, the artists, represented through Demoke and Sekoni in A
Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters, have to take part to the struggle for
historical change.
By and large, Soyinka’s dialectical Marxism is more bent to the role of the
artist regarding to Nigerian postcolonial.
4.1.2 Morality and the Yoruba Aesthetics
Each culture is grounded in ethic values which “may 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”35. In the postcolonial context, the new elites become more and more
immoral by corrupting the whole Nigerian social system. Socially, Western

34William S. Haney. “Soyinka’s Ritual Drama: Unity, Postmodernism, and the Mistake of the Intellect” in
Research in African Literature ( Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 26.

35William Bridgewater and Seymour Kurtz. op. cit, p. 674

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.
Hence, Soyinka analyses Yoruba mythology and ritual drama as able of
conveying and preserve Yoruba ethic values in A Dance of the Forests and The
Interpreters. However, myth, defined as “related to a particular civilization,
group of people, or to a religion and particularly Greek and Latin”36, 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, “emerge 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”37. For
the Yoruba playwright, Yoruba morality resides to the fact that living people
must diminish the gulf that exists between the “mystical”, referring to the
supernatural beings and the “mundane” which stands for human community. It
can be done only through the means of “sacrifices, the ritual, the ceremonies of
appeasement to those cosmic powers which lie guardian to the gulf”38. This hints
the theme of sacrifice which is present in Yoruba culture. In The Interpreters,
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 A Dance of the
Forests, 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

36Dictionnaire Encyclopedia ( Paris : Hachette, 1980), p. 865. [Ensemble des myths propres à une civilisation, à
un peuple, à une religion, et particulièrement à l’antiquité gréco-latine.] Translation is mine

37Wole Soyinka, op. cit, p. 1

38Ibid, p. 144.
in society. This solidarity is illustrated through these words of Senghor: “Unity
through diversity”39.
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
“abyss 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 The Interpreters. As for Demoke, in
A Dance of the Forests, he regains his moral consciousness thanks to the ritual
process symbolized by the ‘transitional abyss’.
All in all, Soyinka posits Yoruba ritual performance as a mean of self-
identification and of resisting European cultural influence in A Dance of the
Forests and The Interpreters.
4.2 Language and Imagery
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”40.
Language and imagery are concepts which are variously defined. In The
American Heritage, The Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary41, 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

39Léopold Sedar Senghor. op. cit, p 4 [ L’unité dans la diversité ]

40Robert P. Gwinn et. al, The New Encyclopaedia, (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1989), p.215.

41The American Heritage, Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1987) p.
25
thoughts and feeling. Concerning imagery, it is “the use of figurative language to
produce pictures in the mind of the readers as a group”42.
Among the particularities of Soyinka’s language, especially in A Dance of
the Forests and The Interpreters, 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 “Words of Iron, Sentence of
Thunder: Soyinka prose style” in Soyinka’s works, they are of two kinds: simple
compound and multiple compounds43. Some are found in The interpreters as
shown in this example ‘Sit-down-strike’ (p. 76) and ‘Dum-belly-woman’ (p. 40)
in A Dance of the Forests.
Apart from compounds, Soyinka uses what Osundare calls “condensed or
indirect similes’44 . A simile is “a word or phrase that compares something to
something else, using the words like or as”45; this allows the creative write to
make an overt comparison. The following lines from The Interpreters and A
Dance of the Forests offer cases of condensed similes: “The beer reversed
direction and Lasunwon’s nostrils were [like] twin nozzles of a fireman’s hose”
(The Interpreters, 15). In the play, the example of condensed similes is
illustrated through this verse: “Rola: …I suppose you wouldn’t like to come and
lie with the/ Pack of dirty, [like the] yelling grandmas and fleatbitten children?
(A Dance, 6)
Metaphors are an integral part in Soyinka’s language. The metaphor is “a
rhetorical device which establishes the similarity of two unlikely things by
treating them as identical.”46

42A.P Cowie. op. cit. p. 450

43Niyi Osundare, op. cit, p. 2

44Ibid. p. 30

45Sally Wehmeier. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary(Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 294.

46Steve Cohan and Linda M. Shires, Telling Stories: A Theorical Analysis of Narrative Fiction(London:
Rouledge, 1991), p.27.
 By and large, Soyinka’s literary works are often marked by the use of
indigenous languages mixed with English language style.
4.2. 1 Yoruba language Influence
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.
Concerning poetic language, it is only found in The Interpreters; it is also
present in his play A Dance of the Forests. 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…
(A Dance, 29)

According to Omole47, Standard English is the basic language in which

The Interpreters 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: “Where you wan go for Obalende?
Sagoe: “To the police station”
Taxi-driver: “Oga mi, hm, so even Nigeria
Police no fit arrest this foolish rain”. (The Interpretres, 109)

47James O. Omole. “Code-Switching in Soyinka’s The Interpreters” in The Language of Literature (Trenton:
Africa World Press, 1998), p. 58.
 There is also, in Soyinka’s works, the influence of Yoruba vocabulary
such as “Agidigbo” and “apala” 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 African Negro aesthetic aspect.
4.2.2 The Symbolic of Human Beings and Natural Elements
For Western concept on symbolism, it can be defined as the “use of
symbols to represent things, especially in art and literature.”48However, African
Negro symbolism differs from European one in so far as the former does not
follow the Western logic. In fact, Negro symbolism, as asserted by Senghor, “…
does not mean what it represents, but what it suggests, what it creates.” 49 From
this perspective, we can have an understanding of Soyinka’s symbolism which is
grounded on Yoruba folklore.
In A Dance of the Forests as in The Interpreters, 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 A Dance
of the Forests and Sekoni in The Interpreters. 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
“water”, “rock”, and “forests” are very recurrent in A Dance of the Forests and
The Interpreters.
All in all, Symbolism in Soyinka’s literary works is generally conveyed
through the symbolic of human being and natural elements which are much
grounded on Yoruba mythology.

48A P Cowie, op. cit. p. 924

49Léopold Sedar Senghor, p 12 […ne signifie pas ce qu’il représente, mais ce qu’il suggère, ce qu’il crée.]
 CONCLUSION

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 this way, at the
traditional and the political levels, Soyinka has striven to deconstruct racist
Eurocentric thought regarding to African tradition in A Dance of the Forests and
The Interpreters. 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 play essential role
because it ensures social harmony. Such a social idealism shows the
effectiveness of Black aesthetics which is materialized through Yoruba tradition.
However, Soyinka emphasizes in A Dance of the Forests and The Interpreters
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 such as 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 A dance of the
Forests and The Interpreters. For Yoruba social hierarchy, the carver such as
Demoke and Sekoni in Soyinka’s works 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 the alleged European individualistic art
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 The Interpreters.
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 A Dance of the
Forests and The Interpreters, 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
“elgungun” (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, which themes are grounded in Yoruba
world and 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 renew with 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 Yoruba theological principles, “Fourth stage” which can be
considered as a mean to struggle against cultural domination and the new
leaders’ greediness.
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 for
socio-political and cultural turmoil. Though Soyinka does not grant radical
responses to postcolonial threads 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 mean of resistance to
Western indoctrination.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

I.Primary sources

- Soyinka, Wole. A Dance of the Forests. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1963.

. The Interpreters. London: André Deutsh, 1965.

II. Other Works by Wole Soyinka

2.1 Novel
. Season of Amony. London Rex Collings, 1973.

2.2 Plays
. Kongi’s Harvest. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.
. Collected Plays Vol 1. New York: Oxford University Press,
1973
. Death and the King’s Horse Man. London: Methuen Drama,
1993.

2.3 Autobiography
 . Aké-The years of Childhood. London: Rex Collings, 1983.
2.4 Essays
. Myth, Literature and the African World. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
. Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essay on Literature and
Culture. Ibadan: New Horn Press, 1988.

III.Secondary sources

-Adebayo, Williams. “Ritual and Political Unconscious: The Case of King’s

Horseman”. Research in African Literature, Indiana: Indiana University Press,
Spring. 1993. Vol.24, No. 1
-Chinweizu, Ibekwe, et al. Toward the Decolonization of African Literature
London: Howard University Press, 1983.
-Crehan, Stewart. “The Spirit of Negation in the Works of Soyinka” in
Research in African Literature (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990)
- Gibbs, James. Critical perspectives on Wole Soyinka. London: Heinemann,
1981.
- Haney, William S. “Soyinka’s Ritual Drama: Unity, Postmodernism, and the
Mistake of the Intellect” in Research in African Literature Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 1990.
-Jones, Eldred Durosimi .The writing of Wole Soyinka. London: Heinemann,
1988. - , Eldred Durosimi & Eustace Palmer ed. African Literature
Today Recent Trends in the Novel.London: Heinemann, 1983.
- Maduakor, Obi. Wole Soyinka: An Introduction to his writing. Ibadan:
Heinemann, 1991.
-Maja-Pearce, Adewale.Wole Soyinka an Appraisal. Oxford: Heinemann
Educational Publishers, 1994.-Ormole, James O. “Code-Switching in Soyinka’s
The Interpreters” in The Language of Literature.Trenton: Africa World Press,
1998.
- Osundare,Niyi. “Word of Iron, Sentence of Thunder: Soyinka’s Prose Style” in
African Literature Today Recent Trends in the Novel .London: Heinemann,
1983.
- Ndiaye, Mamadou Ablaye & Alpha Amadou Sy. African Negro Aesthetics and
the Quest for Universality .Dakar: Nouvelles du Sud, Dakar, 2007.
- Senghor, Leopold Sedar. Liberte I Vol 1, Negritude et Humanisme . Paris:
Edition du Seuil, 1974.
-Stewart, Danièle. Le Roman Africain Anglophone Depuis 1965 d’Achebe à
Soyinka. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988.

IV.General Works

-Barber, Karin. I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Woman and the Past in
Yoruba Town. Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 1992.
-Beier, Ulli. The Origin of Life and Death: African Creation Myth. Heinemann:
Heinemann Educationnel Books, 1966.
-Cohan, Steve & Linda M. Shires, Telling Stories: A Theorical Analysis of
Narrative Fiction.London: Rouledge, 1991.
-Diop, Cheikh Anta. Antériorité des Civilisations Nègres: Mythes ou Vérités
Historique? Dakar: Présence Africaine, 1993.
- Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Literature in Africa. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970.
-Heywood, Christopher. Perspectives on African Literature. London:
Heinemann, 1971.
-Irele, Abiola. The African Experience in Literature and Ideology. London:
Heinemann, 1981.
-Locke, Alain. The New Negro, Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992.

V. Web Bibliography

-Mc Pheron, William. Stanford Presidential Lecture in the Humanities and Arts:
Wole Soyinka. Stanford University, 1998 (http: //
prelectur.standford.edu/lecturers/Soyinka/index.html). Accessed on 28-05-09.

-Uzoatu, Uzor Maxim. The Essential Soyinka (http: // african-writing.

Com/seven/uzoruzoatu/html). Accessed on10-06-09.

VI.Reference Works

-The Columbia Encyclopedia (Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2008).

-Wehmeier, Sally. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Oxford; Oxford
University Press, 2000.
-Gwinn, Robert P. et. Al, The New Encyclopaedia, Chicago: Encyclopedia
Britannica, 1989.
-The American Heritage, Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1987-Bridgewater, William & Kurtz, Seymour. -Dictionnaire
Encyclopedic, Paris : Hachette, 1980.
- The Columbia Encyclopedia, Third Edition .Columbia: Columbia University
Press, 1963.
.