Tragedy and African cosmic reality: Readings in Wole Soyinka’s death and the kings horseman and Esiaba Irobi’s the fronded circle

Abstract

It is understandable why critics like Ruth Finnegan would not see drama or theatre in the make-up of Africa due to their approach to judging African theatricality from Aristotelian templates. Africa is a unique race. Their understanding of the world and their place in it forms the bedrock on which they live and relate with both themselves and their environment. Activities of both social and sacred nature are tightly linked to survival and balance in the cosmic realms. It is on this concept that Africa upholds communalistic living against the individualistic lifestyle of the West. This paper adopted the content analysis approach to reading the concept of African tragedy in the face of Afro-cosmic realities for authors like Finnegan who saw Africa as a barbaric race devoid of theatricality. It is observed that African tragedy goes beyond the fall from grace to grass, the predetermined nature of man’s existence, and the death of the individual. Although it recognizes these concepts in part, it treats them in the light of their implications for cosmic harmony and balance as typified in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Esiaba Irobi’s The Fronded Circle. It concluded that any act of man that alters or attempts to alter the cyclic movement and relationship between the worlds of the living, the dead, and the unborn is tragic within the Afro-cosmic space and spells doom to survival of the erring world, not just to the individual. It is in the actions of this magnitude that African tragedy is located.