Notes to pages–
African English-language writings respectively. In the former, it is almost
something of a norm that the writer is not only expected to be an extraordi-
narily fluent user of the language, she or he is in fact expected to foreground
her or his reflexive relationship to the language as an idiom of expression.
In contrast, in the latter, the colonial complexes of the Caliban syndrome
is thought to preclude any display of mastery, or playfulness in Prospero’s
language in and of itself, relatively freed of the burden of either cultural
resistance or gratified celebration of the colonizer’s language. For Soyinka’s
thoughts on the ramifications of this problem, see his Prefatory note toForest
of A Thousand Daemons, his translation from Yoruba of D.O. Fagunwa’sOgboju
Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale.
For important theoretical works on this problem, see Rosalind Coward
and John Ellis,Language and Materialism, London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul,, and Michel Peucheux,Language, Semantics and Ideology, New York:
St. Martins Press,.
Charles Larson,The Emergence of African Fiction, Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press,.
One of the most acerbic critics of Soyinka as a novelist is Eustace Palmer in
hisThe Growth of the African Novel, London: Heinemann Educational Books,
.
“Wole Soyinka,” interview with Jane Wilkinson, in Jeyifo (ed.),Conversations
with Wole Soyinka,.
That first sentence reads: “Although everybody in Dukana was happy at
first.” Ken Saro-Wiwa,Sozaboy, A Novel in Rotten English, White Plains, NY:
Longman,.
The reactions provoked by the book in Nigeria have been well-documented
in John Agetua (ed.),When the Man Died.
One of the best books on the war and the period is John De St. Jorre,The
Nigerian Civil War, London: Hodder and Stoughton,.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o,Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary, London: Heinemann,
.
See in particular the pieces by Adamu Ciroma and Sobo Sowemimo in
Agetua,When the Man Died.
Of these, see the pieces by Dan Izevbaye and Kole Omotoso in Agetua,
When the Man Died.
Kole Omotoso has explored this issue in his book,Achebe or Soyinka: A Study
in Contrasts,–.
Derek Wright,Wole Soyinka Revisited,–, especially insists on this point.
For important theoretical works on allegory which explore aspects of this
issue, see H. Berger, Jr.,The Allegorical Temper,and Angus Fletcher,
Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode,.
D.S. Izevbaye, “Soyinka’s Black Orpheus,” in Gibbs,Critical Perspectives on
Wole Soyinka.
“The Representation of Women: the Example of Soyinka’sAk ́e,” in Molara
Ogundipe-Leslie,Re-creating Ourselves: African Women and Critical Transforma-
tions, Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press,.