wole soyinka (1934-) is a Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist and critic. He wrote more than 3 works in his life, most of which satirized the social and cultural atmosphere and social abuses in Africa. Born in 1934 to a school supervisor's family of Abeokoutayoruba in western Nigeria. He was educated at ibadan University. In 1954, at the age of twenty, he entered the University of Leeds in England, majoring in English. In 1986, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first African writer to win this honor.

Chinese name: WoleSoyinka

mbth: Wole Soyinka

Nationality: Nigeria

Place of birth: Abeokouta, Nigeria

Date of birth: July 13, 1934

Occupation: playwright, novelist, Critic

Graduate school: University of Itamba

Major achievements: Nobel Prize in Literature

representative works in 1986: Dance of the Forest, Strong Species and Harvest of Kongqi

characters experience

wole soyinka (July 13, 1934-) in July 1934. He belongs to the Yarlung Ba tribe, and the rich legends of the tribe later became an inexhaustible source of his literature. In the late 195s, his first short plays, poems and songs were staged or published here. In 1954, at the age of 2, he entered the University of Leeds, England, specializing in English, and obtained a master's degree in English literature.

In p>1958, he was admitted to the Royal Guanse Theatre as a script editor, director and actor. In 196, wole soyinka returned to Nigeria as a drama researcher. He traveled all over the country to collect folk songs, focusing on investigating and studying folk literature and art, and consciously combined Xiwan drama art with African specialized music, dance and drama to create a new type of drama with African characteristics. He also studied Nigerian folk literature and art, combined western drama art with African traditional music, dance and drama, and created a modern West African drama performed in English, and soon stood out as a playwright, actor and director with extraordinary talent. Soyinka's drama creation has probably gone through more than 2 years from the early stage to the mature stage. His early works were mainly in the period before 196. His works include The Lion and the Gem, The Residents of the Marsh, The Test of Reverend Juro and so on.

In 1961, he helped to establish the Mbary Club, a group of Nigerian writers and artists, which greatly promoted the development of Nigerian literature and art. Soyinka has always been active in Nigerian politics. In 1967, during the Nigerian civil war, he was arrested and imprisoned by the federal government led by YakubuGowon, and was held in solitary confinement. While in prison, he wrote many poems, all of which were later published in PoemsfromPrison. After being detained for 22 months, he was released because of the concern and pressure from the international community. His experiences in prison ended up in The Man Died: Prison Notes. From 196 to 197, Soyinka's works included The Harvest of Kongqi, Dance of the Forest, Madmen and Experts, The Road, Strong Species and so on.

After his release, he went to Europe and Ghana and lived in exile for six years. In 1976, he returned to Nigeria and taught at Ife University. As a visiting professor of English at Cambridge University and Sheffield University, he also travels to Europe regularly. At the same time, he is a visiting professor at Yale University. After 197, the outstanding creative forms are propaganda and inspiring current affairs satire and exposure drama, and the representative work is Death and the King's Groom.

Generally speaking, wole soyinka's works are related to the reality of Africa and Nigeria. He himself said that his "eternal belief is human freedom", and he also engaged in creative activities in line with this consistent proposition. Because of this, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 for "He created a poetic drama of life with a broad cultural vision" and became the first African writer to win this honor.

In addition, Soyinka has always been known for his outspoken views. He often criticizes the Nigerian administrative department and opposes the tyranny of other countries in the world, including the Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe regime. Many of his works have obvious arguments against dictatorship. These radical remarks often put him in danger, but they also greatly increased his reputation. During the rule of Nigerian dictator SaniAbacha (1993 -1998), Soyinka was forced to leave Nigeria and lived abroad all the year round. Later, he became a professor at EmoryUniversity in Atlanta, USA, mainly living in the United States. After the fall of the dictatorship, in 1999, he accepted the title of honorary professor of the former Ife University, now ObafemiAwolowo University in Femia, on the condition that the university must prohibit the recruitment of officers among senior government officials.

On July 15th, 214, Nigeria held various celebrations in recent days to celebrate the 8th birthday of Nigerian playwright and poet and Nobel Prize in Literature winner wole soyinka.

Character Works

Creative Features

Theme

In Soyinka's plays, the irrational factors in the black African cultural tradition are first manifested in the deep-rooted mythological order and sacrificial ceremonies. Soyinka was born in Abeokouta, where Yoruba people have lived for generations. Next to the village, there is a river named after the Ogong god who intensively integrates the iron-making, craftsmanship, war, creation and destruction of the Luba people. Among his ancestors, there are also relatives who are engaged in witch doctors, priests and other occupations. They believe in ghosts and gods, witchcraft and various religious ceremonies different from Christianity. In Nigeria, all kinds of primitive and simple ceremonies are almost full of all aspects of life, and the first and second funerals of the deceased have special ceremonies; There should be a ceremony for naming a newborn: male reproductive circumcision, birthday, foundation laying of a house, and even a ceremony for new car buyers. These ancient ceremonies are a rich cultural resource in themselves, with great creative potential. Thus, the rich myths, complex beliefs and complicated rituals of the West African people play an important role in all his plays. He used the narrative framework of western literature to translate the Yoruba myth into English. Through this literary transmission method, African myths and customs were perfectly combined with western modern drama. At the same time, it has also built a mysterious, illusory, ancient and unfamiliar world of oriental mythology, which is completely different from western rational speculation and industrial civilization. In this way, we can fight against the hegemonic western modern civilization and dispel the cultural centralism in Europe and America.

Soyinka's plays are deeply rooted in the African world and African culture. He is also a writer and playwright who has a wide reading range and is undoubtedly knowledgeable. He is familiar with western literature, from Greek tragedies to Beckett and Brecht (1898-1956), a German dramatist and poet. Outside the scope of drama, he is also proficient in European literature. For example, writers like James Joyce left traces in his novels. Soyinka is a very cautious writer, especially in his novels and poems, he can write as profound and subtle as the avant-garde. During the war, when he was in prison and later, his writing showed a more tragic nature. The spiritual, moral and social conflicts are becoming more and more complicated and sinister. The record of good and evil, the record of destructive power and constructive power is becoming more and more ambiguous, and his plays become ambiguous. In the form of allegory or satire, his plays use moral, social and political issues to create mythical dramas. The dialogue is sharp and profound, the characters become more character-rich, often exaggerated to the point of being funny, and there needs to be an ending-the atmosphere of the drama has warmed up. Its vitality is by no means less than that of its early works-on the contrary: the satirical, humorous, grotesque and comic elements, as well as the mythical fable making, all come alive vividly. Soyinka's use of African mythological materials and European literary training is very independent. He said that he used myth as the "artistic matrix" of his creation. Therefore, this is not a problem of the reappearance of folk traditions, not an exotic reappearance, but an independent and cooperative work. The combination of myth, tradition and ceremony became the nutrition of his creation, not a costume worn at a fancy dress ball.

It is one of the characteristics of modern western drama to create with the help of ancient mysterious cultural images and mythological plots. "With the help of ancient myths and rituals that run counter to rationality and science, trying to rediscover the hope of treating modern painful diseases in the irrational root of rationality and the unconscious source of consciousness is a good way to make up for the deformity and atrophy of human nature caused by technological domination and rational alienation." Moreover, in Nigeria's cultural tradition, drama is also the main way to reproduce religious myths and sacrificial ceremonies. Influenced by the above two reasons, in the early 196s, Soyinka, with the support of Rockefeller Foundation, investigated and studied folk dramas all over Nigeria, seeking ways to modernize ancient folk dramas. Therefore, in Soyinka's plays-most modern tragedies are deeply rooted in Yoruba proverbs and myths, extremely lyrical and gorgeous Yoruba language, and obscure and mysterious Yi Fa oracle. In a sense, Soyinka's drama world is a world of myths and rituals. For example, Dance of the Forest is constructed under a celebration ceremony from beginning to end. There are many images in Yoruba myths and legends. The characters in the play are not only living people, but also the king of the forest, the palm tree spirit, the dark god, the gem spirit, the river god, the ghost, etc., which seems to be a mythical world. In his plays, the myths, legends and rituals of Yoruba are not artificial, but nourish the nutrition of his creation and show the living conditions of modern people directly, synchronously and eloquently. Myth, like poetry, is a kind of truth, or something equivalent to truth. Of course, this kind of truth does not compete with historical truth or scientific truth, but complements them.

Soyinka created a series of myths and victims of ritual order. Because myths and rituals are often used to explain that clan members must abide by specific lifestyles and moral and ethical norms, myths and rituals have the functions of ancestral training and code, and become the authoritative basis for maintaining a certain system, custom and morality. Strong Species is Soyinka's only serious tragedy. The play is also based on a folk legend and ceremony in Yoruba. It is said that there is a custom in Africa to find a foreigner as a victim or scapegoat at the religious ceremony to get rid of the old and welcome the new on New Year's Eve. Fill him with anesthetic, paint him with toner, drag him through the village before midnight, let people dump garbage on him, throw dirty things, bully and curse at will, and finally expel him from the city and never come back, or torture him to death. The intention of doing this is to "plant" all the sins and filth in the city in the past year on him and let him take it away on New Year's Eve. This ceremony is often called "purification ceremony". Aiman, an honest and kind foreigner, died in this way in order to protect another idiot child in another foreign country. He has no ability to resist, because he must abide by the myth and ritual order when he is alive. The villagers have no enmity with Emmont, but for their own benefit, no one dares to break this myth and ritual order. Even Samma, who loves Emmont deeply, can only watch his sweetheart become a scapegoat. More tragically, Emmanuel's father was also a victim of this myth and ritual order. Every year on New Year's Eve, he carries a symbolic boat with garbage on his head, and sends the "filth" of the whole village to the river for the villagers to let it flow away, and finally he is tired to death. Aiman's tragic fate is because he is a foreigner, which is a tragedy caused by objective conditions, while Aiman's father, as a native, has become a hero because of his career. He once proudly told Emmanuel that their family is a "strong species", which is a tragedy caused by a subjective factor. Subjective or objective, father and son have failed to break free from the constraints of myth and ritual order. "Tracing back to the same ancestor of * * *, consolidating the status of totem and ancestor, strengthening the consciousness of the same tribe, and strengthening the role of identifying with the same body of * * *" is a very prominent social function of African myth ceremony. Mythical rituals usually have rich cultural connotations. In folklore, ceremony is often a major moment in life, and people experience two very different worlds before and after the ceremony. In fact, Emmanuel and his father have the symbolic meaning of "scapegoat" prototype. The prototype of "scapegoat" comes from Leviticus, chapter 16, section 1 in the Bible: On Yom Kippur, the Israelites will choose two male goats and give them to the high priest, and by castration, one will be dedicated to God and the other to Asazel, an evil spirit in the wilderness. The latter one is the scapegoat. The high priest put his hands on the sheep's head and admitted all the sins and faults of the people before God, in order to show that all the sins of the people were transferred to the sheep. Then he sent someone to take the sheep to the wilderness and let it go, indicating that it had taken away all the sins of the Israelites. Later, "scapegoat" was translated into "innocent person who suffered on behalf of others" The self-sacrifice of "scapegoat" is to make others or human beings exchange for a happier and better life. Through the above two tragedies, Soyinka exposed the foolish, barbaric and inhuman mythological ritual behavior in African traditional culture. However, paradoxically, while criticizing, Soyinka placed his hopes on the contemporary "abandoning the horse" or "strengthening the species" with the spirit of national sacrifice. Because in Soyinka's view, they are the saviors who lead African people to the world and integrate into the world cultural tide. Only by relying on this mythical "consciousness" can we build an ideal society in which society, nature and individual souls are absolutely unified and harmonious.

Soyinka believes that an excellent writer should have a social historical view of "a metaphysical concern that transcends reality, rather than a metaphysical pure narrative, which reveals a reality that cannot be obtained immediately, and the concept of subverting customs liberates society from outdated historical concepts or other prejudices". With the invasion of colonists, European culture penetrated into the African continent, and African native culture was violently impacted. In the severe non-European cultural collision, some Africans stand still, refuse to accept foreign cultures, and blindly beautify Africa's primitive culture; Some Africans forget their ancestors and fall at the feet of European culture. They think that the moon in Europe is rounder than that in Africa and are willing to be slaves of colonists. Soyinka is the Prometheus of Africa. Standing on the height of world culture, he looked down on non-European culture, bravely stole the "skyfire" to burn down the backward and decadent factors of African traditional culture, found a way to integrate non-European culture, and opened up a road for African traditional culture to innovate and transcend and go to the world. To this end, Soyinka strongly advocated that we should base ourselves on the cultural psychology and aesthetic taste of African national traditions and constantly tap and inherit the essence of African traditional culture. By drawing lessons from modern European culture and re-examining, selecting and deploying our own traditional culture, we can create a new literature that is both world-wide and national. He put the artistic skills of modern western drama