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The Artist's Credo: the Political Philosophy of Wole Soyinka

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Robert W. July
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Extract

‘The artist has always functioned in African society’, he said, ‘the record of mores and experiences of his society and … the voice of vision in his own time. It is time’, he concluded, ‘for [the artist] to respond to this essence of himself.’ The words appeared in mid-1967; their author Wole Soyinka, already celebrated as a leading poet and dramatist, representing the younger generation of writers among Africa's newly independent nations.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 477 - 498
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

page 477 note 1 Transition (Accra), 31, 7 07 1967, p. 13.Google Scholar

page 478 note 1 Soyinka, Wole, The Man Died (London, 1972), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

page 478 note 2 Transition, 42, 1973, pp. 62–3.

page 478 note 3 Soyinka, op. cit. p. 13.

page 479 note 1 For two interpretations, see Jones, Eldred D., The Writing of Wole Soyinka (London, 1973), pp. 32–48Google Scholar, and Moore, Gerald, Wole Soyinka (London, 1978 edn.), pp. 27–39.Google Scholar

page 481 note 1 Soyinka, Wole, Before the Blackout (Ibadan, 1971);Google ScholarKongi's Harvest, in his Collected Plays, 2 (London, 1974).Google Scholar

page 482 note 1 Kongi's Harvest, p. 99.

page 483 note 1 West Africa (London), 1 01 1966, p. 22;Google ScholarDaily Times (Lagos), 18 10 1965;Google ScholarThe Man Died, pp. 155–6. For the political crisis in the Western Region, see Sklar, Richard L. and Whitaker, C. S. Jr, ‘The Federal Republic of Nigeria’, in Carter, Gwendolen M. (ed.), National Unity and Regionalism in Eight African States (Ithaca, 1966), especially pp. 121–6.Google Scholar

page 484 note 1 The Man Died, p. 178.

page 485 note 1 Ibid. pp. 182–3.

page 487 note 1 Soyinka, Wole, Season of Anomy (London, pp. 2, 11, 128–30, 134, 137, 175, and 320.Google Scholar

page 488 note 1 Soyinka to author, 11 September 1959 and 16 April 1960; J. H. Parry to author, 22 May 1959. Rockefeller Foundation Archives, Pocantico Hills, New York, Record Group 1.2,495R, University College, Ibadan, ‘Drama’.

page 489 note 1 Soyinka, Wole, Myth, Literature and the African World (Cambridge, 1976), p. 2.Google Scholar

page 489 note 2 Ibid. p. xi.

page 490 note 1 Ibid. p. 145.

page 491 note 1 Ibid. pp. 51–3. See Tempels, R. P., Bantu Philosophy (Paris, 1959).Google Scholar

page 493 note 1 Myth, Literature and the African World, pp. 15 and 67–75.

page 494 note 1 Ibid. pp. 98–107. See A Dance of the Forests (London, 1963), pp. 53–65.Google Scholar

page 495 note 1 For these ideas of Blyden and Senghor, see July, Robert W., The Origins of Modern African Thought (London, 1968), chs. 11 and 22; Soyinka, Myth, Literature and the African World, p. xii;Google Scholar and The Lion and the Jewel in Collected Plays, 2, p. 47.

page 495 note 2 Myth, Literature and the African World, pp. 53–4.

page 495 note 3 Soyinka, Wole, Idanre and Other Poems (London, 1967), p. 64.Google Scholar

page 497 note 1 Myth, Literature and the African World, pp. 107–9 and 126–39.