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Chapter 5 - Dionysus in Yorubaland

Wole Soyinka

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2020

Adam Lecznar
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

This chapter explores the postcolonial resonances of Nietzsche’s Greeks by focusing on their appearance in the writings of the Nigerian political activist and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. Soyinka encountered Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy as a student of G. Wilson Knight at Leeds in the 1950s; this experience was part of the syncretic vision of dramatic traditions that he developed and which he later theorised in his essay ‘The Fourth Stage’ (1969). In this essay Soyinka argues for a globalised understanding of tragedy that does not rely solely on an exclusivist narrative of its ancient Greek origins, such as can be found in Nietzsche’s invocations of Aryanism in The Birth of Tragedy, and which can incorporate his own Yoruba identity. Soyinka draws links between Dionysus and the Yoruba god Ogun, and he later weaves these into his adaptation of ancient Greek tragedy, The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite (1973). The postcolonial ambivalence that Soyinka writes into this adaptation is the subject of the final section of this chapter, as is his amalgamation of contemporary discourses of heroic black nationalism such as négritude in the character of the Slave Leader.

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Dionysus after Nietzsche
<I>The Birth of Tragedy</I> in Twentieth-Century Literature and Thought
, pp. 161 - 192
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Dionysus in Yorubaland
  • Adam Lecznar, University College London
  • Book: Dionysus after Nietzsche
  • Online publication: 27 March 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108696890.007
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  • Dionysus in Yorubaland
  • Adam Lecznar, University College London
  • Book: Dionysus after Nietzsche
  • Online publication: 27 March 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108696890.007
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Dionysus in Yorubaland
  • Adam Lecznar, University College London
  • Book: Dionysus after Nietzsche
  • Online publication: 27 March 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108696890.007
Available formats
×