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The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism
, New
York: Oxford University Press,
.
One instance of this is Ato Quayson’s “The Space of Transformations:
Theory, Myth, and Ritual in the Work of Wole Soyinka” in Biodun Jeyifo
(ed.),
Perspectives on Wole Soyinka: Freedom and Complexity
, Jackson, MI:
University Press of Mississippi,
,
–
. See also Isidore Okpewho,
“Soyinka, Euripides and the Anxiety of Empire,”
Research In African Literatures
,
vol.
, no.
(Winter
),
–
.
Some of these scholars and critics are Femi Osofisan, Niyi Osundare, Ato
Quayson, Michael Etherton and the author of this study. I have explored
this issue in my Introduction to Soyinka’s book of essays on literature and
culture,
Art, Dialogue and Outrage
, Ibadan: New Horn Press,
, viii–xxxii.
For Femi Osofisan and Niyi Osundare, see their contributions to the volume,
Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal
, Adewale Maja-Pearce (ed.), Heinemann,
, re-
spectively “Wole Soyinka and a Living Dramatist: A Playwright’s Encounter
with Soyinka’s Drama,”
–
and “Wole Soyinka and the Atunda Ideal:
A Reading of Soyinka’s Poetry,”
–
. For Etherton see his
The Develop-
ment of African Drama
, London: Hutchinson University Library for Africa,
, Chapter
, “The Art Theatre: Soyinka’s Protest Plays,”
–
. For
Quayson see “The Space of Transformations: Theory, Myth, and Ritual in
the Work of Wole Soyinka,” in Jeyifo (ed.)
Perspectives on Wole Soyinka
.
.
–
Derek Wright,
Wole Soyinka Revisited
, New York: Twayne Publishers,
,
.
Notes to pages
–
Apart from the very widely quoted Preface to
Death and the King’s Horse-
man
, other Prefaces to Soyinka’s writings which contain major or thought-
provoking theoretical and metacritical views on artistic representation and
socio-historical crises are the Prefaces or “Author’s Note” to
Poems of Black
Africa, Myth, Literature and the African World, The Bacchae of Euripides, A Play of
Giants
,
The Forest of a Thousand Daemons, Idanre and other Poems
and
A Shuttle in
the Crypt
.
Among the more notable commentaries on Soyinka as a critic or theorist
are essays or book chapters contained in the following titles: Obi Maduakor,
Wole Soyinka: An Introduction to His Writings
, New York: Garland Press,
;
Ketu Katrak,
Wole Soyinka and Modern Tragedy: A Study of Dramatic Theory and
Practice
, Westport, CO: Greenwood Press,
; Derek Wright,
Wole Soyinka
Revisited
. Other notable essays on this topic are Ann B. Davis, “Dramatic
Theory of Wole Soyinka” in
Critical Perspectives on Wole Soyinka
and Biodun
Jeyifo, “Oguntoyinbo: Modernity and the ‘Rediscovery’ Phase of Postcolo-
nial Literature,” in
The Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature
, no.
,
.
Louis Althusser remains of course the most influential theoretical proponent
of this thesis of a fundamental “epistemological break” between the early
“humanist” Marx and the “mature” and “scientific” Marx. See his
For Marx
,
London: Allen Lane,
.
The following statement from Sagoe in a conversation with the African Amer-
ican homosexual, Joe Golder, could easily have come from some of Soyinka’s
early anti-N´egritudist essays, especially “And After the Narcissist?”: “Look,
the truth is that I get rather sick of self-love. Even nationalism is a kind of
self-love, but that can be defended. It is this cult of black beauty which sickens
me. Are albinos supposed to go and drown themselves, for instance?” In
The
Interpreters
, London: Andre Deutsch,
,
–
.
Soyinka has said some interesting things on this subject in the “Foreword”
to the Second Edition of his book of essays,
Art, Dialogue and Outrage
. Because
the essays collected in the volume were never intended, Soyinka says, for
compilation, he never hesitated, from time to time, “to cannibalize an essay
which appeared, at the time, to have completed its tour of duty . . . This
is therefore to acknowledge the initiative and labor of the publisher, Pro-
fessor Irele and Dr. Jeyifo, editor of the collection, for embarking upon
what must have been an infuriating and frustrating task. And also to ab-
solve them of errors of attribution for awkward marriages in the volume. It
must have been a daunting task, additionally, in the face of my stubborn insis-
tence on retaining what they considered disposable idiosyncrasies of expres-
sion, including what one commentator has described as “linguistic anomy.”
(
ADO
, vi)
Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth
,
–
.
There are useful extended discussions of Leopold S. Senghor and Alioune
Diop and other theorists and pundits of N´egritude in Robert July’s
An African
Voice: the Role of the Humanities in African Independence
, Durham: Duke University
Notes to pages
–
Press,
. See also Bennetta Jules-Rosette,
Black Paris: the African Writer’s
Landscape
, Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
.
These abstract syntheses between Europe and Africa, considered as “racial”
civilizations, are given their fullest elaboration in Senghor’s writings. See, in
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