The article offers a comment of the dramaturgy of Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel laureate in literature in 1986, by focusing on three plays written in the Sixties: A Dance of the Forests, an enigmatic drama composed for the celebration of Nigeria’s independence from British colonialism, and the two satiric works, released as a collection in The Jero Plays, which are about a charlatan prophet. The analysis concentrates on the staging of the ambivalent power of prophetism, both Christian and Ifa, and takes as a starting point some themes common to Soyinka’s theoretical production and contemporary historiography of Nigerian Christianity: the existence of inner formative forces in African societies that demonstrates their dynamism and openness to change and proves wrong both the colonial myth of an ahistorical Africa and the nationalist myth of a glorious African past interrupted by the colonial trauma.
Profezia e storia nel teatro di Wole Soyinka.
Cristofori S.
2023-01-01
Abstract
The article offers a comment of the dramaturgy of Wole Soyinka, the first African Nobel laureate in literature in 1986, by focusing on three plays written in the Sixties: A Dance of the Forests, an enigmatic drama composed for the celebration of Nigeria’s independence from British colonialism, and the two satiric works, released as a collection in The Jero Plays, which are about a charlatan prophet. The analysis concentrates on the staging of the ambivalent power of prophetism, both Christian and Ifa, and takes as a starting point some themes common to Soyinka’s theoretical production and contemporary historiography of Nigerian Christianity: the existence of inner formative forces in African societies that demonstrates their dynamism and openness to change and proves wrong both the colonial myth of an ahistorical Africa and the nationalist myth of a glorious African past interrupted by the colonial trauma.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
