Download or read book Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka written by Mpalive-Hangson Msiska and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soyinka's representation of postcolonial African identity is re-examined in the light of his major plays, novels and poetry to show how this writer's idiom of cultural authenticity both embraces hybridity and defines itself as specific and particular. For Soyinka, such authenticity involves recovering tradition and inserting it in postcolonial modernity to facilitate transformative moral and political justice. The past can be both our enabling future and our nemesis. In a distinctive approach grounded in cultural studies, Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka locates the artist's intellectual and political concerns within the broader field of postcolonial cultural theory, arguing that, although ostensibly distant from mainstream theory, Soyinka focuses on fundamental questions concerning international culture and political identity formations - the relationship between myth and history / tradition and modernity, and the unresolved tension between power as a force for good or evil. Soyinka's treatment of the relationship between individual selfhood and the various framing social and collective identities, so the book argues, is yet another aspect linking his work to the broader intellectual currents of today. Thus, Soyinka's vision is seen as central to contemporary efforts to grasp the nature of modernity. His works conceptualize identity in ways that promote and modify national perceptions of 'Africanness', rescuing them from the colonial and neocolonial logic of cultural denigration in a manner that fully acknowledges the cosmopolitan and global contexts of African postcolonial formation. Overall, what emerges from the present study is the conviction that, in Soyinka's work, it is the capacity to assume personal and collective agency and the particular choices made by particular subjects at given historical moments that determine the trajectory of change and ultimately the nature of postcolonial existence itself. Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka is a major and imaginative contribution to the study of Wole Soyinka, African literature, and postcolonial cultural theory and one in which writing and creativity stand in fruitful symbiosis with the critical sense. It should appeal to Soyinka scholars, to students of African literature, and to anyone interested in postcolonial and cultural theory.
Download or read book Wole Soyinka written by Biodun Jeyifo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-13 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Study Guide for Wole Soyinka s Death and the King s Horsemen written by Gale, Cengage Learning and published by Gale, Cengage Learning . This book was released on 2016 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Study Guide for Wole Soyinka's "Death and the King's Horsemen," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.
Download or read book Wole Soyinka Literature Activism and African Transformation written by Bola Dauda and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Wole Soyinka written by Mpalive-Hangson Msiska and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 1997-11 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book reconsiders Soyinka's contribution to the debate about African identity, exploring the various elements constituting his distinctive aesthetic and apprehension of African culture. It concentrates on his plays, his fiction and poetry and investigates his views on the relationship between myth, history, and modernity, primarily highlighting his conception of the nature of African post-colonial society and power. Also, the book looks at Soyinka's exploration of the metaphysical aspects of evil, particularly as manifested in political violence, and, in addition, it examines his belief in the irrepressibility of the human desire to transcend any form of political, spiritual and social oppression. Finally, it argues that Soyinka's major contribution to our understanding of contemporary African life and art lies in his attempts to move beyond the idea of identity as an opposition between Self and Other to a conception of identity in which such concepts are either themselves questioned or transferr
Download or read book Wole Soyinka Revisited written by Derek Wright and published by Twayne Publishers. This book was released on 1993 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual marks the intersection between the divine and the human, the metaphysical and the naturalistic, the spiritual and the communal; crossing these boundaries places individuals and societies in crisis, a moment both dangerous and potentially powerful. Thus, Soyinka applies and reinterprets traditional mythological themes to serve his passionate commitment to human freedom and social justice for Nigeria in its transition to an independent state. Many of his works were performed as street theater - often under harassment from the authorities - as political protest against corruption and power abuse in government. Wright surveys Soyinka's more than 30 works, focusing especially on the plays The Road, Death and the King's Horseman, Madmen and Specialists, and A Play of Giants. He also analyzes Soyinka's poems, novels, and autobiographies, including The Interpreters, The Man Died, Ake, and Isara
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Essay written by Tracy Chevalier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 1032 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking new source of international scope defines the essay as nonfictional prose texts of between one and 50 pages in length. The more than 500 entries by 275 contributors include entries on nationalities, various categories of essays such as generic (such as sermons, aphorisms), individual major works, notable writers, and periodicals that created a market for essays, and particularly famous or significant essays. The preface details the historical development of the essay, and the alphabetically arranged entries usually include biographical sketch, nationality, era, selected writings list, additional readings, and anthologies
Download or read book Wole Soyinka written by Anjali Gera Roy and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributed articles.
Download or read book Wole Soyinka written by Derek Wright and published by Fredericton, N.B. : York Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Postcolonial Plays written by Helen Gilbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of contemporary postcolonial plays demonstrates the extraordinary vitality of a body of work that is currently influencing the shape of contemporary world theatre. This anthology encompasses both internationally admired 'classics' and previously unpublished texts, all dealing with imperialism and its aftermath. It includes work from Canada, the Carribean, South and West Africa, Southeast Asia, India, New Zealand and Australia. A general introduction outlines major themes in postcolonial plays. Introductions to individual plays include information on authors as well as overviews of cultural contexts, major ideas and performance history. Dramaturgical techniques in the plays draw on Western theatre as well as local performance traditions and include agit-prop dialogue, musical routines, storytelling, ritual incantation, epic narration, dance, multimedia presentation and puppetry. The plays dramatize diverse issues, such as: *globalization * political corruption * race and class relations *slavery *gender and sexuality *media representation *nationalism
Download or read book New Makers of Modern Culture written by Justin Wintle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 2569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Makers of Modern Culture is the successor to the classic reference works Makers of Modern Culture and Makers of Nineteenth-Century Culture, published by Routledge in the early 1980s. The set was extremely successful and continues to be used to this day, due to the high quality of the writing, the distinguished contributors, and the cultural sensitivity shown in the selection of those individuals included. New Makers of Modern Culture takes into full account the rise and fall of reputation and influence over the last twenty-five years and the epochal changes that have occurred: the demise of Marxism and the collapse of the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of postmodernism; the eruption of Islamic fundamentalism; the triumph of the Internet. Containing over eight hundred essay-style entries, and covering the period from 1850 to the present, New Makers of Modern Culture includes artists, writers, dramatists, architects, philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, sociologists, major political figures, composers, film-makers and many other culturally significant individuals and is thoroughly international in its purview. Next to Karl Marx is Bob Marley, next to John Ruskin is Salman Rushdie, alongside Darwin is Luigi Dallapiccola, Deng Xiaoping runs shoulders with Jacques Derrida as do Julia Kristeva and Kropotkin. Once again, Wintle has enlisted the services of many distinguished writers and leading academics, such as Sam Beer, Bernard Crick, Edward Seidensticker and Paul Preston. In a few cases, for example Michael Holroyd and Philip Larkin, contributors are themselves the subject of entries. With its global reach, New Makers of Modern Culture provides a multi-voiced witness of the contemporary thinking world. The entries carry short bibliographies and there is thorough cross-referencing. There is an index of names and key terms.
Download or read book Questioning History written by Greg Clingham and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional eighteenth-century paradigms of reason, truth, and nature underlie modern concepts of self, gender, sex, etc. that are challenged today in the name of a more liberated and pluralistic problematics. This book is the first of two volumes of essays that identify this postmodern challenge. It examines the historiography of postmodern phenomena in relation to the eighteenth-century texts that they ventriloquize. More essays on the topic are contained in Making History (Bucknell Review, Vol. 42, No. 1).
Download or read book Bodies and Voices written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging collection of essays centred on readings of the body in contemporary literary and socio-anthropological discourse, from slavery and rape to female genital mutilation, from clothing, ocular pornography, voice, deformation and transmutation to the imprisoned, dismembered, remembered, abducted or ghostly body, in Africa, Australasia and the Pacific, Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain and Eire
Download or read book The Politics of Adaptation written by Astrid Van Weyenberg and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2013 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores contemporary African adaptations of classical Greek tragedies. Six South African and Nigerian dramatic texts – by Yael Farber, Mark Fleishman, Athol Fugard, Femi Osofisan, and Wole Soyinka – are analysed through the thematic lens of resistance, revolution, reconciliation, and mourning. The opening chapters focus on plays that mobilize Greek tragedy to inspire political change, discussing how Sophocles’ heroine Antigone is reconfigured as a freedom fighter and how Euripides’ Dionysos is transformed into a revolutionary leader. The later chapters shift the focus to plays that explore the costs and consequences of political change, examining how the cycle of violence dramatized in Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy acquires relevance in post-apartheid South Africa, and how the mourning of Euripides’ Trojan Women resonates in and beyond Nigeria. Throughout, the emphasis is on how playwrights, through adaptation, perform a cultural politics directed at the Europe that has traditionally considered ancient Greece as its property, foundation, and legitimization. Van Weyenberg additionally discusses how contemporary African reworkings of Greek tragedies invite us to reconsider how we think about the genre of tragedy and about the cultural process of adaptation. Against George Steiner’s famous claim that tragedy has died, this book demonstrates that Greek tragedy holds relevance today. But it also reveals that adaptations do more than simply keeping the texts they draw on alive: through adaptation, playwrights open up a space for politics. In this dynamic between adaptation and pre-text, the politics of adaptation is performed.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Novel written by Paul Schellinger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 2557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of the Novel is the first reference book that focuses on the development of the novel throughout the world. Entries on individual writers assess the place of that writer within the development of the novel form, explaining why and in exactly what ways that writer is importnant. Similarly, an entry on an individual novel discusses the importance of that novel not only form, analyzing the particular innovations that novel has introduced and the ways in which it has influenced the subsequent course of the genre. A wide range of topic entries explore the history, criticism, theory, production, dissemination and reception of the novel. A very important component of the Encyclopedia of the Novel is its long surveys of development of the novel in various regions of the world.
Download or read book Of Borders and Thresholds written by Michal Kobialka and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theatre is full of borders and boundaries: between the "real" and "illusionary" conditions of the stage, between the way one acts onstage and in "real" life, between stage and audience, performance and reception. As such, theatre offers a unique opportunity to examine the construction, representation, and functioning of borders. This is the task undertaken by the authors of this volume, the first to apply the lexicon and concepts of border theory to theatre history and performance theory. The contributors, highly regarded theatre historians, theorists, and practitioners, address a wide range of border-related themes. Their topics include the construction of "America" in the sixteenth century, theatre practices in eighteenth-century England, American Latino playwrights, performances of gender and sexuality, cyborg technologies, and fashion.
Download or read book The Body in the Library written by Leigh Dale and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 1998 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The body is increasingly understood as being at the centre of colonial and post-colonial relationships and textual productions. Creating and circulating images of the undisciplined body of the 'other' was and is a critical aspect of colonialism. Likewise, resistance to colonial practices was also frequently corporeal, with indigenous peoples appropriating, parodying, and subverting those European practices which were used to signify the 'civilized' status of the colonizing body. The Body in the Library reads representations of the corporeal in texts of empire; case studies include: - gendered representations of corporeality - medical régimes - ethnography and photography in the Pacific - cultural transvestism in theatre - disease and colonial knowledge generation - 'freak shows' and colonial exhibits - cinematic representations of bodies - geography and the metaphorization of land as a penetrable body - marketing the body - organ transplants and the limits of the post-colonial paradigm In viewing colonialism and resistance as a bodily phenomenon, The Body in the Library enables new perspectives on the process of colonization and resistance. It is an important resource for teachers and students of colonial and post-colonial literatures.
