Notes to pages– See especially, Brian Crow, “Soyinka and the Romantic Tradition” in Dapo
Adelugba (ed.),Before Our Very Eyes,–, Robin Graham, “Wole Soyinka:
Obscurity, Romanticism and Dylan Thomas” in Gibbs,Critical Perspectives
on Wole Soyinka,–, and Geoffrey Hunt, “Two African Aesthetics: Wole
Soyinka Versus Amilcar Cabral” inMarxism and African Literature, Georg
Gugelberger (ed.), Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press,,–.
Philip Brockbank, “Blood and Wine: Tragic Ritual from Aeschylus to
Soyinka,”Shakespeare Survey,no.(),.
. :
Some of the documentation can be found in James Gibbs,Critical Perspectives
on Wole Soyinka, especially Chaptersand,–,–.
For an engrossing comparison of the dramaturgy of Soyinka with that of
Heine Muller against the background of common Brechtian traces in both
Soyinka and Muller, see Joachim Fiebach, “Wole Soyinka and Heine Muller:
Different Cultural Contexts, Similar Approaches,” in Biodun Jeyifo (ed.),
Perspectives on Wole Soyinka: Freedom and Complexity, Jackson, MI: University
Press of Mississippi,.
In Soyinka,Art, Dialogue and Outrage.
Soyinka’s most forthright statement of his deep interest in Cabral’s ideas
on culture, identity and revolution is to be found in the short statement,
“Guinea-Bissau: An African Revolution” inTransition(Accra),,–. But
see also his reflections on Cabral in the polemical essay, “The Autistic Hunt;
Or How To Marximize Mediocrity” inArt, Dialogue and Outrage, Ibadan: New
Horn,, New York: Pantheon,.
While the influence of Soyinka on younger Nigerian playwrights like Femi
Osofisan and Bode Sowande is very easily discernible in the form and sub-
ject matter of their dramatic works, the influence of Soyinka as a poet is
far less obvious, far more subliminal in younger poets like Niyi Osundare
and Odia Ofeimun, though both are great admirers of the older poet.
For testimonies by Osofisan and Osundare on this point, see their con-
tributions in the volume Jeyifo,Perspectives on Wole Soyinka: Freedom and
Complexity.
I have explored the staging of Soyinka’sThe Roadin three different regions
of the English-speaking world, Port of Spain, Trinidad, Mysore, India and
London in an essay, “Whose Theatre, Whose Africa?”, forthcoming in the
journalModern Drama.
Derek Wright, in a not unsympathetic discussion of the novel, calls it
“politically simplistic” in “its cartoon-like polarization of wicked, imbe-
cilic potentates and impotent visionaries.” InWole Soyinka Revisited, New
York: Twayne Publishers,,. See also Abdulrazak Gunnar, “The
Fiction of Wole Soyinka” in Adewale Maja-Pearce (ed.),Wole Soyinka: An
Appraisal, London: Heinemann,,–, and Abiola Irele, “Parables
of the African Condition: The New Realism in African Fiction” in hisThe