The ambiguous freight of visionary mythopoesis:
fictional and nonfictional prose works
What I do see is a new voice coming out of Africa, speaking in
a worldwide language... The price a world language must be
prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The
African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out
his message best without altering the language to the extent that its
value as a medium of international exchange will be lost.
Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and the
English Language”
In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, and a
wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imper-
fectly in many words, which might have been more plainly deliv-
ered in few. Narration in dramatic poetry is naturally tedious, as it is
unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action;
it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by interruption.
Shakespeare found it an incumbrance, and instead of lightening it
by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour.
Samuel Johnson,Preface to the Plays of William ShakespeareWithin the entire body of Soyinka’s writings, the fictional and non-
fictional prose works constitute the most uneven group of works. This
poses a formidable challenge for scholars and critics. In this chapter,
we explore the complex interplay between social vision and its artistic
mediation in the seven works of fiction and nonfiction that constitute
the complement of the Nigerian author’s prose writings, minus the three
volumes of collected critical and theoretical writings that we have earlier
discussed in this study. These seven titles are:The Interpreters(),The
Man Died(),Season of Anomy(),Ak ́e: The Years of Childhood(),
Isara: A Voyage Around ‘Essay’(),Ibadan: The ‘Penkelemes’ Years(),
andThe Open Sore of a Continent(). Nothing affords a better discursive
context for analyzing these works than a brief review of the controversies
and paradoxes surrounding the reception of Soyinka’s prose writings.