INVERTED REALITY AND CULTURAL RESPONSE TO MODERNITY IN WOLE SOYINKA’S THE LION AND THE JEWEL (LE LION ET LA PERLE)
Keywords:
Soyinka’s postcolonial drama, African cultural nationalism, tradition versus modernityAbstract
African dramatic literature is a product of and a response to the society which informs its creativity. Nigerian playwrights such as Wole Soyinka, therefore, have been generating ideas for their dramatic creativity from the trajectory of events that occur at their remote and immediate environments. With the qualitative approach of textual analysis and literature review, the article adopts tenets of postcolonial theory to critique Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel (Le Lion Et La Perle) – a play that has been critiqued by some scholars from the perspectives of culture/ideological conflicts. The socio-cultural relevance of the play, perhaps, has informed its translation into French language. For this article, however, the English version of the play is used based of the fact that English has wider coverage in literary discourses. With the theoretical and analytical approach in this article, the play is discussed beyond the spectra of culture and ideological conflicts by considering its characterization and plot. The cultural response to modernity is the advocacy for cultural synthesis of tradition and modernity for sustainable modernity.
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