Yoruba Cosmology and Mythology in Wole Soyinka’s The Road

Abstract

Wole Soyinka has made Yoruba Culture the backbone of his literary output  to create the African Hermeneutics for the world to understand the hitherto Dark Continent - Africa in its indigenous perspective. Yoruba culture separates the cosmos into two worlds:

• The human world
• The world of deities

The human world contains manifestations of the ancestors, the living, and the unborn.  In the Yoruba world a community's collective sense reflects  the complex ties to the ancestral community and to the unborn community. Ancestral spirits enter the person who wears the masque, which acts as  the bridge between the worlds of the dead and the living .

Yoruba myths are stories about the efforts made to cross these gulfs between human and divine existence and between the existence of dead, living, and unborn. Ogun, the god of iron and of metallurgic lore and artistry, was the first to succeed in conquering the gulf. Ogun is also, Soyinka explains, "the god of creativity, guardian of the road, explorer, hunter, god of war, custodian of the sacred oath.”

Professor the protagonist of the play The Road is symbol of Ogun’s duality.  As on one side he is an explorer of the unexplored and on the other side he is an exploiter.  He is a Sunday school teacher and also the god of death i.e. Ogun. Professor tries to bridge this gulf   through      his  ‘part psychic, part intellectual grope  towards the essence of death.’ The present paper elaborates how ingenuously Wole Soyinka utilises his deep sense of Yoruba culture in this play The Road.

Keywords: Yoruba, Ogun, African myths, Hermeneutics

DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/76-08

Publication date:October 31^st 2021