Wole Soyinka: Literature, Activism, and African Transformation
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Bola Dauda is a retired scholar based in the UK who currently serves as Executive Director of the Pan-African University Press. He is co-author, with Toyin Falola, of Representative Bureaucracy, Meritocracy, and Nation-Building in Nigeria (2015), Decolonizing Nigeria 1945-1960 (2017), and Nigerian Bureaucracy in an African Democracy (2017), among other publications.
Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair Professor in the Humanities and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Texas at Austin, USA. His publications include A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt: An African Memoir (2004), Counting the Tiger’s Teeth: A Memoir (2014), and In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation (2019).
This book is without any doubt well researched and offer very useful insight into the works and the environments that contributed to making Soyinka what he is today. The duo of Dauda and Falola have through this effort added their own to the body of rich and well-documented works that have come out to interpret Soyinka to his readers and make his work more accessible and understandable ... [T]he duo has contributed in no small way to advancing the frontiers of knowledge and understanding of Soyinka’s complex world. It is a book that should adorn bookshelves of libraries and institutions where serious intellectual work is done. Kudos to Dauda and Falola for this.
Naija Times
Wole Soyinka’s imprimatur on African literature was before his laureateship. This is an Exhibit A of his secular and scared creations whose cessation should come in his wishes, when <i>Obatala</i>, the Yoruba god of creations, calls him home.
Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Associate Director, Wole Soyinka Foundation (2017-2020), University of Johannesburg, South Africa
This book dares to unearth new truths about Wole Soyinka—and more importantly to ask new questions—and by so doing, unmasks the man, his politics, and his art.
E.C. Osondu, Professor of English, Providence College, USA, and Winner of the 2009 Caine Prize for African Writing
This book is yet another worthy addition to scholarship on Wole Soyinka's massive oeuvre, written by profoundly genial, cerebral and authoritative voices on African and global Humanities. It is a must-read for all scholars, intellectuals, and change agents committed to the deployment of cultural and literary superstructure, through the example of the literary patriot Wole Soyinka.
Olufemi Obafemi, Professor of English and Dramatic Literature, University of Ilorin, Nigeria, and President of the Association of Nigerian Authors
This timely and expansive biography of Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer, Nobel laureate, and social activist, shows how the author’s early years influence his life’s work and how his writing, in turn, informs his political engagement. Three sections spanning his life, major texts, and place in history, connect Soyinka’s legacy with global issues beyond the borders of his own country, and indeed beyond the African continent.
Covering his encounters with the widespread rise of kleptocratic rule and international corporate corruption, his reflection on the human condition of the North-South divide, and the consequences of postcolonialism, this comprehensive biography locates Wole Soyinka as a global figure whose life and works have made him a subject of conversation in the public sphere, as well as one of Africa’s most successful and popular authors. Looking at the different forms of Soyinka’s work--plays, novels, and memoirs, among others--this volume argues that Soyinka used writing to inform, mobilize, and sometimes incite civil action, in a decades-long attempt at literary social engineering.
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Preface
PART 1: INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
1. Studies on Wole Soyinka
2. Wole Soyinka in Historical Perspective
PART 2: HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND
3. Abeokuta: The City of Innovations and Creativity
4. Collective Traditions, Childhood, and Rites of Passage
5. Nobel Laureate: Literary Scholarship and Nation-building
6. Relationships, Beliefs, and Values
PART 3: LITERARY WORKS
7. Soyinka's Novels
8. Dramatic Oeuvre
9. Soyinka's Poetry
10. The Politics of Soyinka’s Literature
PART 4: LEGACIES AND CONCLUSION
11. Soyinka’s Contribution to Literature
12. Soyinka’s Literary Achievements and the Use of Language
13. Conclusion: Will Soyinka’s Works Outlive Him?
Bibliography
Index
In recent times, the vibrant nature of Black creativity is pulsating through global cultures. Whether it is the roaring success of the utopian fictionalization of Africa in Black Panther or Beyonce’s acclaimed Black is King, Black/African/Diaspora literature making its way into the reading lists of people across the globe, African cinema/Nollywood’s global travels, or the increasingly-growing popularity of Afrobeats on the world stage, this is an exciting time for Black culture. With all of these interests in Black literature, music, film, art, etc., comes the necessity of an academic series that offers a forum for new works on the theoretical perspectives of these burgeoning expressions of Black literature and culture.
Bloomsbury’s Black Literary and Cultural Expressions series provides a much-needed space for exploring dimensions of Black creativity as its local expressions interface with the global circulation of culture. From contemporary and historical perspectives, and through a multidisciplinary lens, works in this series critically analyze the provenance, genres, aesthetics, intersections, and modes of circulation of works of Black cultural expression and production.
To submit a proposal, please contact Amy.Martin@bloomsbury.com or the series editors: Toyin Falola (toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu) and Abimbola A. Adelakun (adelakun@austin.utexas.edu). For more information, see www.bloomsbury.com/discover/bloomsbury-academic/authors/submitting-a-book-proposal.
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Bola Dauda is a retired scholar based in the UK who currently serves as Executive Director of the Pan-African University Press. He is co-author, with Toyin Falola, of Representative Bureaucracy, Meritocracy, and Nation-Building in Nigeria (2015), Decolonizing Nigeria 1945-1960 (2017), and Nigerian Bureaucracy in an African Democracy (2017), among other publications.
Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair Professor in the Humanities and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Texas at Austin, USA. His publications include A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt: An African Memoir (2004), Counting the Tiger’s Teeth: A Memoir (2014), and In Praise of Greatness: The Poetics of African Adulation (2019).