Introduction
1.0 Background Of The Study
This thesis espouses and identifies gaps in critical comments made about the subject matter of Death and the King's Horseman and The Road. Consequently, the study analyses the various positions taken by critics concerning Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and The Road. Most importantly, the study sought out the binaries that operate throughout the plays so as to unequivocally bring to the fore some of the prejudices that informed these plays. While the world view that Soyinka presents in these plays gives us a better understanding of the trilogic „essence‟ of Yoruba culture (the world of the living, the death and the unborn) − what most critics believe to be his underlying thesis, this tripartite relationship works as a form of higher truth (transcendental signified); the philosophy that unsettles the Western view of Africa as the other.
Therefore, in order to achieve the set objective this research evaluates Wole Soyinka's two plays; Death and the King's Horseman (1975) and The Road (1965) from a deconstructive standpoint. Precisely, the research pits these plays against Soyinka's submissions in his polemics i.e Myth, Literature and the African World. The polemics presents Africa as a fount-head of all its culture. Besides, the study looks out for instances where Soyinka's language occasionally spills or slips from his control. To this end therefore, this study evaluates the typologies enunciated in these works. It therefore follows that the main trajectory of the discourse in this study is not simply what Soyinka says but how he uses the same tool of the “adversary” as Professor Yakubu Nasidi (2002:7) would say, to create a supposedly African world where African plays reflect an ontologically African reality different from the West.
…
