WOLE SOYINKA AND NIGERIAN LITERATURE
Harvest, Lagos; September: records The Detainee for BBC in
London.
WOLE SOYINKA: A CHRONOLOGY
[James Gibbs, Critical Perspectives on Wole Soyinka (1980),
provided much of the information in the first part of the following
chronology. Adesola Adeyemi has kindly provided most of the later
material.]
1934 Born Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka on 13 July in Ijebu Isara in
Western Nigeria. His father Ayo was a school supervisor and his
mother Eniola "a trader."
ca. 1940-1952. attends primary school in Abeokuta and secondary
school at Government College, Ibadan.
1952-54 University College, Ibadan, an institution affiliated with the
University of London
1954-1957 University of Leeds (UK). Receives Honors Degree in
English Literature.
1957. Begins work for M. A. at Leeds but abandons graduate studies
to work in theater; serves as play reader for Royal Court Theatre,
London.
1965-67. Senior lecturer, Department of English, University of
Lagos; criticizes personality cults and dictatorship in Africa.
1966. April: Revives Kongi's Harvest, Dakkar festival; June: Trials
of Brother Jero produced, Hampstead Theatre Club, London;
December: The Lion and the Jewel , Royal Court Theatre, London;
shares John Whiting Award with Tom Stoppard.
1967. Idanre and Other Poems. Head of the Department of Theater
Arts, University of Ibadan; June: "The Writer in a Modern African
State;" August to October 1969 imprisoned for writings sympathetic
to secessionist Biafra; September: The Lion and the Jewel produced
Accra; November: Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed
produced, Greenwich Mews Theatre, New York; Idanre and Other
Poems.
1968. April: Kongi's Harvest, produced by Negro Ensemble
Company, New York.
1969. February: The Road produced by Theatre Limited, Kampala,
Uganda; Poems from Prison, London.
1958. September: Produces The Swamp Dwellers for the University
of London Drama Festival.
1970. August: Completes and directs Madmen and Specialists with
Ibadan University Theare Arts Company in New Haven, Connecticut
(at Yale?); play tours to Harlem; directs plays by Pirandello and
others; Kongi's Harvest (film).
1959. February: The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel
produced in Ibadan; November: Writes, produces, and acts in a An
Evening without Decor, a medley of his work, at the Royal Court
Theatre, London; attacks racism and colonial repression in Africa in
these and other works.
1971. A Shuttle in the Crypt (poems); March: revives Madmen
and Specialists in Ibadan; acts Patrice Lumumba in John
Littlewood's French production of Conor Cruise O'Brien's
Murderous Angels, Paris; testifies before Kazeem Enquiry on
violation of students' rights.
1960. Returns to Nigeria; March: The Trials of Brother Jero
produced at Ibadan; May: Acts role of Yang Sun in The Good
Woman of Setzuan at Ibadan; October: completes, directs, and acts
in A Dance of the Forests with his own acting company, 1960
Masks.
1972. Publishes his prison notes, The Man Died, London; July:
produces extracts from A Dance of the Forests in Paris.
1961-64. Directs plays by other playwrights, Ibadan; attacks political
intriguing, corruption, and manipulation of mass media in The (new)
Republican and Before the Blackout.
1960-62. Rockefeller Research Fellow; attached to English
Department at the University of Ibadan studying African drama;
December: "Towards a True Theatre" (essay); writes political satire
on based on emergency in Western Nigeria.
1962-1963. Lecturer, Department of English, University of Ife
1963 Culture in Transition (film)
1964. December: Founds, with others, the Drama Association of
Nigeria.
1965. The Interpreters (novel) published in London; April: Writes
and directs Before the Blackout, Orisun Theatre; directs Kongi's
1973. Honorary Ph. D., University of Leeds; Season of Anomy
(novel); Collected Plays I; August: National Theatre, London,
produces Bacchae of Euripides, which it commisioned.
1973-74. Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge, and
Visiting Professor of English, University of Sheffield; Collected
Plays II.
1975. Edited Poems of Black Africa, London and New York; "NeoTarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Tradition" (essay); attacks Idi
Amin in Transition.
1976. Ogun Abibiman (poems); Myth, Literature, and the African
World; Visiting Professor, Institute of African Studies, University of
Ghana, Legon; Professor, University of Ife; September: Nairobi High
School production of A Dance of the Forests; October: French
production of A Dance of the Forests, Dakar, Gambia; December:
produces Death and the King's Horseman, Ife.
1978. "Language as Boundary" (essay)
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WOLE SOYINKA AND NIGERIAN LITERATURE
1981 Aké: The Years of Childhood (autobiography); Opera
Wonyosi, an adaptation of Brecht's Three Penny Opera; "The Critic
and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy, and Other Mythologies" (essay).
SOYINKA AND THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR
1982. Blues for the Prodigal (film) released; "Cross Currents: The
'New African' after Cultural Encounters" (essay).
1983 (December) Die Still, Rev. Dr. Godspeak (radio play);
Requiem for a Futurologist (play) produced at Ife university; Blues
for a Prodigal (film); "Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist"
(essay); (July) - Unlimited Liability Company (phonograph
recording).
1984 A Play of Giants (play)
1985.Requiem for a Futorologist published; "Climates of Art"
(Herbert Read Memorial Lecture), Institute of Contemporary Art,
London.
1986. Nobel Prize for Literature. "The External Encounter:
Ambivalence in African Arts and Literature" (essay), A Play of
Giants (play), Fellow, Society for the Humanities, Cornell
University; Agip Prize for Literature; 1986 (October); Awarded of
Nigeria's second highest honour, Commander of the Federal
Republic, CFR.;
1987 Six Plays; Childe Internationale (play) republished.
1988 Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems
1989 "The Search" (short story).
1991 Sisi Clara Workshop on Theatre (Lagos); A Scourge of
Hyacinths (radio play) BBC African Service; "The Credo of Being
and Nothingness" (The First Rev. Olufosoye Annual Lecture in
Religion, delivered at the University of Ibadan on 25th January,
1991; published
1992 From Zia With Love
1993 honorary doctorate, Harvard University
1994 Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946-1965)
(autobiography); Memories of a Nigerian Childhood; Flees Nigeria
(November).
1995. The Beatification of Area Boy,
1996 The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the
Nigerian Crisis
1997. March: Charged with treason by military dictatorship.
Lisa Sachs '93 English 32 (1989)
Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt contemplates a
critical period in Nigerian history between 1966 and
early 1971. Soyinka's efforts to curtail the Nigerian Civil
War in 1967 resulted in his arrest and imprisonment
without trial by the federal military government.
Soyinka's work remains inseparable from his activities
as a political dissident. His commitment to promoting
human rights in Nigeria and other nations reflects his
new approach to literature as a serious agent of social
change. A Shuttle in the Crypt chronicles Soyinka's
twenty-five month experience of solitary confinement
with its accompanying horrors and dangers. His poems
typify the renewed political concern of the African
writer as a critic of societies which promote human
degradation. Soyinka denigrates Africa's past while
warning his people to redirect their energies in order to
avoid the demoralization and purposeless cruelty which
characterize contemporary Nigeria. A comprehension of
the inner reality of Soyinka's experience as a political
prisoner requires understanding historical events,
including Nigeria's military convention and ensuing civil
war.
Nigeria escaped British colonialism by declaring
independence from Great Britain on October 1, 1960 and
eventually became a republic in 1963. After World War
II, weary Britain regarded Nigeria as a costly empire and
thus, expressed amenity in granting the colonial
governments more political and economic power. Britain
devised a new constitution in 1950 which provided for a
federal system with powers shared between central
authorities and three regional legislatures. Such
government reorganization spurred the formation of
three major political parties. The National Council for
Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), led by Dr. Nnamdi
Azikiwe, dominated the Eastern Region. The Action
Group (AG), led by Yoruba Chief Obafemi Awolowo,
comprised the political entity in the Western Region.
The Nigerian Peoples Congress (NPC), controlled by the
sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, led the Muslim
areas in the Northern Region. The deputy leader of the
NPC, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, became prime
minister while Azikiwe, after aligning his party with the
NPC, assumed the larger role of governor-general. The
AG emerged as the opposition party.
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WOLE SOYINKA AND NIGERIAN LITERATURE
Political antagonisms and increasing corruption
characterized the first government of independent
Nigeria. The establishment of the Midwest Region
irritated many Yoruba of the Western Region, including
Soyinka. Disagreements between Awolowo of the AG
and regional Premier Samuel Akintola paralyzed the
Western Region where central authorities assumed
control for ten months. Representatives of the federal
government charged Awolowo and other Yoruba leaders
with treason in 1962 and sentenced them to fifteen years
in prison. On January 14, 1966, the federal government
proclaimed martial law as a solution to Nigeria's
problems. The overthrow of the federal government
resulted in the mass violence which Soyinka sharply
attacked, including the murders of Prime Minister
Balewa, Akintola, and the sardauna of Sokoto.
Major General Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Ibo and new leader of
the military government, gained control of the coup and
established military governors in each of the regions
while suspending the constitution. Northerners who
feared Ibo dominance staged a military counter-coup in
July of 1966 which resulted in Ironsi's murder.
Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon, a Northerner,
replaced Ironsi as chairman of the federal military
government. Political dissension continued in many
northern cities where mobs began killing easterners,
particularly members of the Ibo ethic group. Lieutenant
Colonel Odemugwu Ojukwu of the Eastern Region
charged Gowon with insensitivity toward the Ibo crisis
and restricted all non-easterners from his region. Gowon
retaliated by replacing the four regions of Nigeria with
twelve states. Like Ojukwu, Soyinka spoke out against
human rights violations and the policies of such right
wing Nigerian leaders as Colonel Gowon. Fearful that
Gowon desired to divide the Ibo, Ojukwu announced his
secession and on May 30, 1967, declared the Eastern
region an independent state named the 'Republic of
Biafra.' Troubled by the prospect of Nigeria's imminent
war with Biafra, Soyinka traveled to the enemy camp
with the intention of making a personal appeal for peace.
The Gowon regime reacted by jailing Soyinka without
charges in solitary confinement for nearly two years.
Nigeria attempted to counter the secession by initiating a
war with Biafran forces. Soyinka's poems pay tribute to
the thousands of deaths which resulted after the three
year battle, including members of the Ibo slaughtered in
Biafra by his fellow Yoruba. Only three African nations
recognized Biafra as a republic whereas Nigeria gained
support from Britain, the United States, and the Soviet
Union. On January 12, 1970, the Biafran forces
surrendered in central Iboland, marking the end of the
Nigerian Civil War. Gowon released Soyinka from
prison after the defeat of the Biafrans. Within five years,
special federal agencies devoted to relief and
reconstruction rehabilitated the war torn areas of
Nigeria, but the internal scars of its prisoners remained
indelible.
(Source : Gailey, Harry A. and David T. ed. The
Encyclopedia Americana Vol. 20. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1972)
NIGERIAN LITERATURE: ORAL AND WRITTEN
TRADITIONS
LAURA C. GARDNER '94, EL 32 [SEMESTER I, 1990]
Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt, contains poems
such as "O Roots!" and "When Seasons Change" which
obviously hark back to Nigerian ancestry and folklore.
The poems' geographical and generational African
references prompt an investigation of the literary
traditions of Soyinka's nation. Nigerian literature has a
long history in the oral tradition. Bade Ajuwon's article,
"Oral and Written Literature in Nigeria," found in
Nigerian History and Culture, explains:
Pre-literate Nigeria once enjoyed a verbal art civilization
which, at its high point, was warmly patronized by
traditional rulers and the general public. At a period
when writing was unknown, the oral medium served the
people as a bank for the preservation of their ancient
experiences and beliefs. Much of the evidence that
related to the past of Nigeria, therefore, could be found
in oral traditions.
Although most Nigerians knew and could recount parts
of their genealogy and local history, only a few oral
artists had the skill and stamina required to chant the
lengthy oral literature. The oral artists, freelancers or
guild-associates, enjoyed reverence as "keepers of the
people's ancient wisdoms and beliefs." These oral artists
frequently entertained their audiences dramatically,
providing relaxation and teaching moral lessons. In
Yorubaland, "as a means of relaxation, farmers gather
their children and sit under the moon for tale-telling. . .
.The telling of stories is used by narrators to instruct the
young and teach them to respect the dictates of their
custom: as a result, a large body of moral instruction, of
societal values and norms are preserved for posterity by
the Yoruba."
Western influences began affecting Nigerian literature as
early as the eighth century AD when Arabic ideas and
culture were introduced to Africa. During the fourteenth
century, written and spoken Arabic flourished in
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WOLE SOYINKA AND NIGERIAN LITERATURE
northern Nigeria and by the seventeenth century, some
Hausa literature had been translated into Arabic.
Christian missionaries accelerated the importation of
western education into Nigeria during the nineteenth
century. Some native black Moslems met the threat of
white Christians with protests in poetry. Aliyu dan Sidi,
for example, utilized the oral literature tradition to write
poetic protests against the missionaries. However, other
Yoruba authors, such as D.O. Faguna and Isaac Delano,
wrote novels promoting the missionaries and teaching
the Christian religion. Although Faguna and Delano
offered Christian religious instruction and preached
acceptance of western ideas, both relied heavily upon
their ancestral folktales in creative writing. Faguna's
pieces in particular "show and extensive use of proverbs,
riddles, traditional jokes and other lore central to Yoruba
belief."
In various parts of the country, novels developed around
1930. Centered upon fantastic, magical characters of
humans and fairies, Hausa novels, called "non-realistic
novels," were based on folktales. The "mysterious"
characters transmuted into other beings; fairies, animals,
and humans all conversed among one another. Of
Muhammadu Bello's fantasy novel Gandoki, Ajuwon
comments, "One is led to say that the book is a reduction
of Hausa oral tradition to written literature." In the
1930's, Igboland also saw a growth in the number of
novelists who expressed the distaste of their people for
the Christian missionaries. While poetry of that
persuasion emphasized religious devotion to Allah
(shunning the Christian god), Pita Mwana's 1935 prizewinning book, Omenuko, shows the style of a antimissionary "didactic intention" underlying a fantasy
novel.
justice; they employed human characters and concrete
symbols."
More Nigerian authors meant more authors writing in
English, including Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe.
Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart, published in
1958, details the tragic disintegration of Igbo clans upon
the arrival of the Europeans. Igbo folklore saturates the
novel, preserving the African elements despite the
English prose. Kofi Awonoor comments, "These [Igbo]
proverbs are intricately woven into the fabric of his
style, completely absorbed to the extent that they
constitute one of the most significant features of his
totally African-derived English style." With the
publication of The Interpreters in 1965, Soyinka earned
his international reputation as a novelist, although later,
he became better known for his drama and poetry. The
poetry in the collection A Shuttle in the Crypt, echoes
with elements of older Nigerian literature. The repetition
found in "O Roots!" recalls the ritualistic chanting of the
oral literature. Both "O Roots!" and "When Seasons
Change" dwell upon the images of ancestral generations
and the souls of ancient Nigerians, reflective of the
purpose of the oral literature of keeping family and local
histories alive. Although Soyinka's poetry in A Shuttle
in the Crypt encompasses many themes and techniques
of modernists, it, nevertheless, reverberates with the
Nigerian oral and written literary traditions.
From Bade Ajuwon, "Oral and Written literature in
Nigeria," Nigerian History and Culture , Richard
Olaniyan, editor. (Hong Kong: Longman Group Ltd,
1985), pp.306-318, 326.
A major shift in literary style from fantasy to realism
resulted from the founding of the University College of
Ibadan in 1948. The calls for a new literary style came
from scholars educated in the western tradition at the
University. Conferences, journals, and newspapers urged
the shift to realism; when the Ministry of Education
sponsored a novel-writing competition in 1963, "the kind
of story they wanted to see was the story that dealt with
the kind of things we could see with our eyes in Nigeria
today." Yoruba writers of the time reacted appropriately,
eliminating the fairies in favor of human characters,
omitting the animal-to-human conversation found in the
non-realistic literature. Leaving behind group-specific
references and literature styles, the authors worked with
broader themes. "Thus a new literary tradition was being
adopted by many Yoruba novelists; they dealt with such
universal themes as religion, labor, corruption, and
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