The Portrayal of the Clash between Modernism and Traditionalism in Wole Soyinka’s “The Lion and the Jewel”

Abstract

Wole Soyinka is Nigerian playwright and poet. A quality of violence, A Dance of the
forests, the strong breed, Madman and specialists, Death and the king’s horseman were some
of his works. The Lion and The Jewel (1964) is one among them. It satirizes the absurdities of
his society with a meek, humorous and affectionate spirit. The struggle of independence
darkened his outlook and so his later works were very sombre plays depicting a sort of typically
abnormal condition of the societies. His range of plays is from comedy to tragedy and from
political satire to the theatre of the absurd. He has combined influences from the western
traditions and inter-twinned with African myth, legends and folklore, and used techniques like
singing and drumming.