Wole Soyinka
argued that the god of revolution chose to make a habitation in Soyinka’s
writings, not in the familiar mask of the righteous judge and executioner
of the unjust, the exploiters and the despots, but in the confounding and
contradictory doubleness of prophet and charlatan, altruist and misan-
thrope, victim and perpetrator, creator and destroyer. Ogun, Soyinka’s
acknowledged Muse, Professor inThe Road, Demoke inA Dance of the
Forests, the Old Man inMadmen and Specialists, Elesin Oba inDeath and the
King’s Horsemanand the composite group of the protagonists of Soyinka’s
first novel,The Interpreters, all of these characters and nearly all the major
protagonist figures in Soyinka’s writings, as in the great dramatic para-
bles of Bertolt Brecht, bear the marks or the traces of this ambiguous,
aporetic doubleness in relation to the striving for human emancipation.
I hope that enough has been said in this study to indicate that this pat-
tern reflects, on Soyinka’s part, neither a reactionary recoil from all talk
of revolution that is a decisive feature of the ideological temper of the
present historical period, nor a convergence with the postmodernists’
radical skepticism concerning the place of reason in revolution and its
agents and forces.
One “form of attention” which has been influential in the reception of
Soyinka’s works is that of professional critics, especially with regard to the
institutionalization of the academic study of Anglophone writings of
the developing world in the second half of the twentieth century. Perhaps
the most succinct scholarly statement on the achievement of Soyinka’s
works to date is that contained in the very short, one-paragraph “Intro-
duction” to the book,Research on Wole Soyinka, edited by James Gibbs and
Bernth Lindfors and published in. The brevity of this “Introduc-
tion” makes it possible for it to be quoted in its entirety:
Most of the articles in this volume were originally published inResearch in African
Literatures, the exceptions being a few essays of our own covering topics or ma-
terials that others have not yet studied. Our intention has been to provide a
reasonably broad introduction to the works of Soyinka and to the varieties of
critical methodologies represented, ranging from those concerned with verbal
texture (linguistic, structural and textual approaches) to those focusing on cul-
tural context (historical, mythological and comparative studies). One will also
find plenty of metacriticism – critics quarreling with one another about fine
points of interpretation or surveying a wide range of response to a particular
text or issue. Soyinka’s complex, nuanced art affords an inexhaustible source of
stimulation to sensitive readers, so it is not surprising that there are so many dif-
ferent readings of his works. We do not expect that the essays collected here will
bring an end to such controversies; rather, we would hope that they will prompt
rigorous new research leading to fresh appraisals of the achievements of one