Myth And Archetypal Research Of Ogun And Osun In Soyinka’s Plays

Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist and critic, winner of Nobel Prize for literature in 1986, has been influencing contemporary play due to his broad cultural vision and poetic languages. His creation is rooted in Yoruba unique worldview and its historical tradition.Ogun, combination of creative and destructive powers, occupies an important position in Yoruba myth system. With his rich connotation and symbolic significance, he has been frequently recreated in Wole Soyinka’s different plays, which supplies an important clue to the study of Soyinka’s plays. Osun, Yoruba goddess, takes charge of water and rivers, and masters art of creating life, for which she is regarded as god of creation and origin of life. Soyinka, as a loyal inheritor of the Yoruba culture, creatively incorporates traditional artistic elements into his own creation.Thus Osun, another important member of Yoruba culture, without exception, occupies significant position in Soyinka’s plays. It is significant for Soyinka to introduce endangered traditional myths into his creation.On the one hand, it shows African unique worldview toward cosmology so as to refute the so-called savage African; On the other hand, by these traditional myths, Soyinka aims to arouse the world’s attention to African culture and to realize dialogue and communication between African culture and world culture.Thus, it is necessary and significant to have a further study of the myth and archetypes in his plays so as to have a better understanding of his plays.This thesis contains five parts. Introduction first makes a brief discussion on Soyinka’s life, his play creation and the current researches on Soyinka’s plays both at home and abroad. Based on predecessor’s researches, it comes to research subject and significance. Chapter 2 mainly introduces the theoretical basis of the thesis—Frye’s myth and archetypal criticism, which focuses on an illustration of Frye’s main archetypal views and his research method. But firstly this chapter makes a brief introduction of two important forerunners of this theory—Frazer and Jung, then makes a summary of their important archetypal views, which lay solid foundation for the formation of archetypal criticism. Finally, this chapter introduces the myth-archetypal background of Soyinka, which gives a further interpretation for choosing archetypal perspective to study Soyinka’s plays. Chapter 3, as one of the main body of the whole thesis, mainly performs a detailed archetypal analysis of Ogun with the aid of archetypal criticism and Soyinka’s plays, so as to reveal two important connotations of Ogun and his displacement in Soyinka’s plays, which has more important value and fresh significance. Chapter 4, another important part of the main body, is mainly on archetypal analysis of Osun. Combined with Yoruba tradition, this chapter makes an interpretation of Osun’s mystical power, secular power and makes an exploration of many Osun characters in Soyinka’s plays. Conclusion, on the basis of above research, makes a systematic summary of research findings, emphasizes the remarkable value for Soyinka to introduce traditional myths and ritual play into his own creation and points out the limitations of this thesis and implications for future Soyinka’s studies.