Wole Soyinka
Nobel Prize-winning author, playwright, academic and poet.
Professional Information
Professional Areas:
Literature
Working primarily in:
Nigeria
Description of Work:
Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near
Ibadan in western Nigeria. After preparatory university studies in 1954
at Government College in Ibadan, he continued at the University of
Leeds, where, later, in 1973, he took his doctorate. During the six
years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court
Theatre in London 1958-1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller
bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. At the same
time, he taught drama and literature at various universities in Ibadan,
Lagos, and Ife, where, since 1975, he has been professor of comparative
literature. In 1960, he founded the theatre group, "The 1960 Masks" and
in 1964, the "Orisun Theatre Company", in which he has produced his own
plays and taken part as actor. He has periodically been visiting
professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale.
During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article
for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of
conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political
prisoner for 22 months untill 1969. Soyinka has published about
20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English and his
literary language is marked by great scope and richness of
words.
As dramatist, Soyinka has been influenced by, among others, the
Irish writer, J.M. Synge, but links up with the traditional
popular African theatre with its combination of dance, music, and
action. He bases his writing on the mythology of his own
tribe-the Yoruba-with Ogun, the god of iron and war, at the
centre. He wrote his first plays during his time in London,
The Swamp Dwellers and
The Lion and the Jewel (a
light comedy), which were performed at Ibadan in 1958 and 1959
and were published in 1963. Later, satirical comedies are
The
Trial of Brother Jero (performed in 1960, publ. 1963) with
its sequel,
Jero's Metamorphosis (performed 1974, publ.
1973),
A Dance of the Forests (performed 1960, publ.1963),
Kongi's Harvest (performed 1965, publ. 1967) and
Madmen
and Specialists (performed 1970, publ. 1971). Among Soyinka's
serious philosophic plays are (apart from "
The Swamp
Dwellers")
The Strong Breed (performed 1966, publ.
1963),
The Road ( 1965) and
Death and the King's
Horseman (performed 1976, publ. 1975). In
The Bacchae of
Euripides (1973), he has rewritten the Bacchae for the
African stage and in
Opera Wonyosi (performed 1977, publ.
1981), bases himself on John Gay's
Beggar's Opera and
Brecht's
The Threepenny Opera. Soyinka's latest dramatic
works are
A Play of Giants (1984) and
Requiem for a
Futurologist (1985).
Soyinka has written two novels,
The Interpreters (1965),
narratively, a complicated work which has been compared to
Joyce's and
Faulkner's, in which
six Nigerian intellectuals discuss and interpret their African
experiences, and
Season of Anomy (1973) which is based on
the writer's thoughts during his imprisonment and confronts the
Orpheus and Euridice myth with the mythology of the Yoruba.
Purely autobiographical are
The Man Died: Prison Notes
(1972) and the account of his childhood,
Aké ( 1981),
in which the parents' warmth and interest in their son are
prominent. Literary essays are collected in, among others,
Myth, Literature and the African World (1975).
Soyinka's poems, which show a close connection to his plays, are
collected in
Idanre, and Other Poems (1967),
Poems from
Prison (1969),
A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972) the long
poem
Ogun Abibiman (1976) and
Mandela's Earth and Other
Poems (1988).
Biography from Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1986, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1987 . Reproduced on http://www.nobelprize.org
Biographical Information