Notes to pages–
Tree of Life:The RoadRetrodden,” inSoyinka: A Collection of Critical Essays,
Oyin Ogunda, ed., Ibadan, Nigeria: Syndicated Communications,,
–.
This point has been given a major scholarly exploration in Femi Euba’s
Archetypes, Imprecators and Victims of Fate: Origins and Development of Satire in
Black Drama, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,. See also Ropo
Sekoni inFolk Poetics: A Sociosemiotic Study of Yoruba Trickster Tales, Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press,, especially Chapter, part of which is
devoted to the analysis of some plays of Soyinka in the context of Sekoni’s
interesting theoretical distinctions between what he calls “mythic” and “sec-
ular” traditions of the trickster figure in Yoruba culture, the former repre-
sented by Esu, the latter by the tortoise persona of folktales.
See Ayodele Ogundipe’s magisterial two-volume doctoral dissertation,Esu
Elegbara, the Yoruba God of Chance and Uncertainty: A Study in Yoruba Mythology,
unpublished PhD dissertation, Indiana University,. Building on this
work and the works of other scholars, H.L. Gates, Jr. has extended the
complex significations of the Esu paradigm into an extended and original act
of cultural theorizing and literary criticism in the Afro-American tradition
in hisThe 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 hisThe 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,,
.