Soyinka’s A Dance Of The Forests An Iconoclast Postcolonial Play

Résumé: This article examines Soyinka’s early attitudes towards African past and tradition through his play A dance of the Forests. In his early works, mainly A Dance of the Forests, the playwright has marked a rather offensive entry to the world of African literature. Convinced that a tiger does not claim his tigritude, Soyinka has violently criticised the Negritude movement in its nationalist attempt to fashioning a sense of belonging antithetical to that of the colonising west. Soyinka, thinks that the negritude’s plaid for spirituality and emotionality as delineating traits for the African character could boomerang on Africa’s postcolonial writing back project by rather providing evidence of the blasphemies of the colonial discourse that the Blackman has nothing between his ears. Soyinka, therefore, has waged through his play a violent onslaught on the legacies of African past, which may be understood as a means of circumventing the awkward assertions that seemingly trapped the Negritude movement.

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