Jonson in West africa: a study of the elements of Jonsonian comedy in the plays of Soyinka and Sutherland

Abstract

The originality of this research is primarily grounded in its comparative nature with its substantial focus on the Renaissance English dramatist, Jonson and two West African dramatists, Soyinka and Sutherland. The study seeks to respond to a gap in comparative research which for a long time has been confined to studying the elements associated with Jonson’s comedy on other European writers, but rarely on West African dramatists. The thesis investigates the relationship between Soyinka and Sutherland, on the one hand, and Jonson, on the other hand, in terms of their artistic choices, thematology, and stylistic modes; and also examines what echoes, semblances and parallels which exist between them, as dramatized in some selected plays of the three dramatists. The study draws interpretive insights from Bloom’s poetics in his Anxiety of Influence, The New Historicism Theory, Frye’s views on archetypes and Eliot’s idea of tradition in his essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” to shed light on whether modern twentieth century writers’ art and skills are mere echoes of their predecessors or they demonstrate their distinct individual talents. The findings from the study establish that the three dramatists utilize a common archetype of the trickster image as the sub-structure of their plays as well as their individual choices and stylistic modes converge in the timeless tradition of literary production to express a confluence of their aesthetic energies. The thesis concludes that the West African dramatists selects tropes and ideas from the realities of their socio-cultural environments to express their distinct originality, for they did not imitate Jonson’s craft.