A Dance of the Forests

Hello Monks...
I am Riddhi Bhatt.So today I want to talk about "A Dance of the Forests " by Wole Soyinka. As a part of the syllabus, students of the English Department are learning the paper called "African Literature". This task s assigned to Miss. Yesha Bhatt. So, let’s start friends. But before we start I want to give short information about what kind of things we see here…

Wole Soyinka :

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka is an English-language Nigerian dramatist, writer, poet, and essayist. He was the first Sub-Saharan African to be honoured with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. In the Nigerian city of Abeokuta, Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family. He started at Government College in Ibadan in 1954 and went on to University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England after that. He worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London after studying in Nigeria and the UK. He then went on to compose plays that were staged and broadcast in both nations. He was a key figure in Nigerian politics and the country's fight for independence from British colonial authority.He seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio in 1965 and broadcast a call for the Western Nigeria Regional Elections to be cancelled. During the Nigerian Civil War in 1967, he was arrested by General Yakubu Gowon's federal authority and held in solitary confinement for two years.
Soyinka has been a vocal opponent of successive Nigerian (and African) regimes, particularly the country's several military rulers, as well as other political tyrannies such as Zimbabwe's Mugabe dictatorship. "The oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it," he has written extensively.Soyinka left Nigeria on a motorbike via the "NADECO Route" under the reign of General Sani Abacha (1993–98). Later, Abacha issued a "in absentia" death sentence on him. Soyinka returned to Nigeria after civilian authority was restored in 1999. Soyinka projected 2020 as the most difficult year in the country's history in December 2020. He stated, " "With the volatility that marked the year 2020, and as activities come to a close, the tone has been repulsive and pessimistic. I don't want to come out as negative, but this has been one of the most depressing years I've ever witnessed in this country, and it's not because of COVID-19. Natural disasters had occurred in other places, but how have you managed to cope with them?"

Brief Sketch of A Dance of the Forests :

Wole Soyinka's drama A Dance of the Forests is one of his most well-known works. The play "denigrated the beautiful African past and cautioned Nigerians and all Africans that their energy should be devoted in the future attempting to avoid repeating the mistakes that have already been done," according to the playwright. It was an iconoclastic book at the time of its release, infuriating many of Soyinka's own Nigeria's elite. Politicians were enraged by his foresight in portraying post-colonial Nigerian politics as aimless and corrupt. Despite the barrage of criticism, the play continues to have an effect. Soyinka espouses a singular vision for a new Africa, one worthy of trying to forge identity free of colonialism.A Dance of the Forests is Soyinka's dramatic debut, and it is widely regarded as the most complicated and difficult of his works to comprehend. In it, Soyinka exposes society's flaws and shows that the history is no better than the present when it comes to the nefarious side of life. He exposes the Nigerian society's fabric and issues a warning as the country approaches a new stage in its history: independence.

Narrative technique of the play - A Dance of the Forests:

The narrative technique of this play has little to do with classic western drama's five-act format. It is split into two halves. The first half follows the protagonists' experiences as they learn to know one another, with Forest as their guide. Father, disguised as Adenebi, makes his way to the woodland and celebration of the birth of his son the coming together of the tribes.Ogun and Eshuoro are on the search for Demoke at the same time. Murete is compelled to confess what he knows by both of them. Demoke's father, the Old Man, and Agboreko both strive to find Demoke and save him. All of the protagonists in this scenario disregard the invited visitors from the past, the Dead Man and the Dead Woman. The second section transports us to Mata Kharibu's court, where the characters we've previously seen reprise their roles as characters from the past—apart from the Dead Man and the Dead Woman, who portray themselves as they were when they lived, and the courageous warrior and his expectant wife, of course.

The thematic resonance becomes a little muddled following the scenes from Mata Kharibu's court, as we have a succession of various choruses, ghosts, ants, and the Triplets' masque. Disguise and masquerade take the place of traditional tale telling, and the plot stagnates. The pace slows until picking up again when Demoke gets involved in the game of ample to reunite the Half-Child with its mother and perform the totem pole climbing expiation ceremony. As day rises, Ogun departs, Eshuoro and his jester run, and Agboreko and the Old Man stumble across Demoke and learn a bit about the strange night's events.Part truth, part anything beyond material reality as we know it, part ritual, part clear storstoryey, the play is, therefore,therefore part reality, part something beyond material reality as we know it. To some extent, the dance is circular to symbolise the cycle of sin which has continued from Mata Kharibu's time to the present, and which will hopefully be ended by Demokel's selfless act of forgiveness on behalf of the whole community.

The contrast Soyinka establishes between the past and the present, between the living and the dead, between dark or terrifying times and moments of light-hearted tomfoolery, is remarkable. The opulent spectacle in a Soyinka play alternates with "moments of dark caricature" and "electric caverns of tension succumbed to wide planes of laughing and celebration," according to Femi Osofisan (Maja-Pearce 48). Part One of the play exemplifies this disparity. The comedic taunting of Murete by Ogun is juxtaposed with the anxiousness of the Old Man seeking for his son, as well as the darker and more clandestine interaction of the four characters in the forest, Demoke, Rola, Adenebi, and Obaneji.

Also, I want to discuss Western Influences on 'A Dance of the Forests'...

Western Influences on 'A Dance of the Forests' :

Soyinka was familiar with the western dramatic tradition as a result of his education in Nigeria and Leeds, as well as his job in London. In A Dance of the Forests, we may discern certain influences of this tradition, however subtle they are. Because of Soyinka's ambition to bring the Yoruba worldview and Yoruba theatre to the world's attention, they are feeble. When the Spirits and the Half-Child converse, their words sound a lot like choric passages from Aeschylus and Sophocles' Greek tragedies:

Half-Child: I who yet await a mother

Feel this dread,

Feel this dread,

I who flee from womb

To branded womb, cry it now

I'll be born dead

I'll be born dead.. . .

Spirit of Darkness: More have I seen, I, Spirit of the Dark,

        Naked they breathe within me, foretelling now...

Half-Child: . . .Branded womb, branded womb...

Spirit of the Palm: White skeins wove me.

Spirit of the Darkness: Peat and forest...

Half-Child: Branded womb, branded womb. (64-65)

The Half-Child is evocative of the bleeding child conjured up by the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth- IV. I. 77ff, to signify Macduff's "unnatural" or CaesarIan birth. Muerte appears to be a cross between Ariel and Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Forest Father's role in bringing the four live people together and so initiating the cycle of sin and atonement is evocative of Prospero from Shakespeare's The Tempest. He is the one who creates the appearance of a shipwreck in order to make up for previous wrongdoings and restore his lost dukedom.

However, there is a crucial distinction to be addressed here. While Prospero makes several allusions to grace, prayer, and "heavenly melody," Forest Head makes none of these references. Soyinka gives the idea that Forest Father has no higher divinity on whom he relies. Unless one wishes to perceive a parallel between Demoke's sacrifice on behalf of the community and Jesus' sacrifice, the Christian worldview does not enter A Dance of the 'Forests.

Work Cited:

• Bevington, David. "Macbeth". Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 Dec. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Macbeth-by-Shakespeare. Accessed 23 February 2022.
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Wole Soyinka". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Sep. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wole-Soyinka. Accessed 23 February 2022.
• Hylton, Jeremy. “The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare.” The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare, Shakespeare.mit.edu, http://shakespeare.mit.edu/index.html.
• Soyinka, Wole. A Dance Of the Forests . Oxford University Press, USA, 1966.

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