| Summary: | This essay explores Soyinka’s social, political and cultural concerns taking as point of departure his exploration of the role of myth in Yoruba culture and its repercussions in contemporary Nigerian society. In his rewriting of Euripides’ best known tragedy, Bacchae, Soyinka reflects on the impact of the colonial process and on the role of modernday dictatorship in many Third-World countries. Interestingly called The Bacchae of Euripides. A Communion Rite, Soyinka’s play takes the effects of intertextuality to the extreme, not only by taking the Greek tragedy as hypotext, but by relating Euripides’ subversive criticism of Greek imperialism to his own denunciation of colonization and tyranny. Because of its radical use of imagery —such as the fact that the blood which emanates from Pentheus’ head at the end of the play becomes wine and everybody drinks from it—the play was not well received in London in the 1970s, but has been recognized as one of Soyinka’s masterpieces after that.
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