Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Essay on Modern African Literature, Pauline Dodgson - Hallmark Works Of Modern African Literature

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HALLMARK WORKS OF MODERN AFRICAN LITERATURE

WOLE SOYINKA: MADMEN AND SPECIALISTS. LONDON, METHUEN, 1971.

The first version of Madmen and Specialists was performed in the United States and directed by Soyinka at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, in 1970. Soyinka directed a second version of the play in 1971 at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. It is this version that is the published text.

Madmen and Specialists comes out of the experience of the Nigerian Civil War and of Soyinka's detention during the war. It is a tragedy set within a world of almost unremitting horror. There is very little plot development, and the characters are shadowy with few signs of individual development. Eldred Durosimi Jones has described the structure of the play as fluid, stating that “there is a continual fading back and forth so that time and place become almost abstract.”¹ Obi Maduakor has described the play as...

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1. Introduction
2. Essay: Introduction
3. Representative Writers
4. Modern African Literature And Other Literary Movements
5. Hallmark Works Of Modern African Literature
6. Critical Responses To African Literature
7. Further Reading
8. Copyright

1. African Literature