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Death and the King's Horseman » (Second Edition)

Book cover image of Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka

Authors: Wole Soyinka
ISBN-13: 9780393322996, ISBN-10: 0393322998
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Date Published: April 2002
Edition: Second Edition

Author Biography: Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka, one of Africa's foremost writers, won the Nobel Prize in 1986 and is the author of Death and the King's Horseman, among other works.

Book Synopsis

A Nobel Prize-winning playwright's classic tale of tragic decisions in a traditional African culture.

Chicago Tribune

Soyinka both entertains and asks subtle questions about mass psychology, individual psychology, and universal human struggles of the will.

	Introduction
	Acknowledgments
	The Text of Death and the King's Horseman	1
	Map of Yorubaland	66
	The Yoruba World	67
	Oba Waja (The King Is Dead)	74
	Theatre in African Traditional Cultures: Survival Patterns	89
	Wole Soyinka and the Myth of an African World	103
	Soyinka's New Play	113
	Death and the King's Horseman in the Classroom	115
	Wole Soyinka's 'Death and the King's Horseman,' Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester	121
	Mediation in Soyinka: The Case of the King's Horseman	141
	Death and the King's Horseman	151
	Being, the Will, and the Semantics of Death	155
	Ideology and Tragedy	164
	Elesin Oba and the Critics	172
	Ritual Closure in Death and the King's Horseman	177
	Ritual and the Political Unconscious: The Case of Death and the King's Horseman	187
	Death and the King's Horseman and the Masks of Language	196
	Tragedy, Mimicry, and "The African World"	207
	Wole Soyinka: A Chronology	223
	Selected Bibliography	227