Home > Death and the King's Horseman Summary & Study Guide > Essays and Criticism > Death and the King’s Horseman: A poet’s quarrel with his culture

Death and the King's Horseman | Death and the King’s Horseman: A poet’s quarrel with his culture

In this essay, the author argues that the actions of Elesin represent the ‘‘form and functioning state of his culture.’’

In the ‘‘Author’s Note’’ to his play Death and the King’s Horseman (1975), Wole Soyinka, while instructing the play’s future producer on its correct stage interpretation, incidentally also describes the kind of tragedy he has written: its ‘‘threnodic essence,’’ he says, is largely the metaphysical confrontation ‘‘contained in the human vehicle which is Elesin and the universe of the Yoruba mind. . . .’’ This description does more than guide the producer: its terms (metaphysical confrontation, human vehicle, universe of the Yoruba mind) suggest that...

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