


































EXCELLENCY COOU JOFOCUS JOURNAL 2022.cdr


  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”

17 18

Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice and 
Exploitation in Wole Soyinka's “Samarkand and Other 
Markets I Have Known”

Christopher Anyokwu, PhD
Department of English

Faculty of Lagos,
Nigeria.

Abstract

Wole Soyinka in this poem-sequence goes, hammer and tongs, to 
the roots of prejudice and exploitation, two of the greatest societal 
ills threatening the fragile and delicate fabric of society in 
contemporary times.  Deploying the ancient city of Samarkand as 
leitmotif in this poem-sequence, Soyinka brings a lifetime of 
mastery of the poetic art to bear on the subject of ideological 
obfuscation and religious fundamentalism which have all but 
reduced the “marketplace” (read: the World) to rack and ruin.  
Preaching the countervailing sermon of the “primal sanctity of 
man”, Soyinka recommends a neo-traditionalist, return-to-
sources strategy exemplified by the Yoruba Ifa moral-cum-
spiritual compass as the redemptive path to universal 
understanding and healing.  In this paper, I examine the foregoing 
thematics through a close reading of this single poem and 
conclude, with the poet, that, a return to the salvific imperative of 
animist metaphysics will heal the world.

Keywords: Prejudice, Exploitation, Religion, Ideology, 
Samarkand, Marketplace

Ugwuanvi, Kingsley. "Western Mentality and Emasculation in 
Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus.Journal of the 
Literary Society of Nigeria (JLSN), vol 3, no 1, 2011, pp. 
35-44.

Uko, Iniobong I. “Reconstructing Motherhood: A Mutative 
Reality in Adichie PurpleHibiscus”. A Companion to 
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.Ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu. 
James Currey, 2017. 57-71.

Zeitlin, Irving. The Social Condition of Humanity: An 
ndIntroduction to Sociology,  2  edition.1981, OUP.

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



19 20

Introduction
There is no gainsaying the fact that Wole Soyinka's poetry 

is generally regarded as difficult or obscure.  The reasons for its 
alleged obscurity have been debated and argued over among 
literary critics and scholars of African poetry over a long period of 
time.  Consequently, years of critical reception of Wole Soyinka's 
poetry have significantly helped reduce the degree of this alleged 
obscurity of his poetry.  Soyinka has, to be sure, produced several 
volumes of poetry including Idanre and Other Poems (1965), A 
Shuttle in the Crypt (1971), Ogun Abibiman (1976), Mandela's 
Earth and Other Poems (1988) and Samarkand and Other 
Markets I Have Known(2002).  If anything, charges of “private 
esotericism” and “wilful obscurity” have trailed his work and as a 
result of this, foremost poet and critic, Donatus I. Nwoga argues 
that “there are degrees and variations of obscurity in modern 
African poetry”.  He further adduces one of the reasons for this 
problem of incomprehension to the fact that “the poet takes his 
images and figures from areas ranging from distant civilisations 
through a variety of literary sources to local myths, legends, and 
rituals, and it would require the same breadth of reference for the 
reader to come to terms with his work” (36).

For his part, Tanure Ojaide posits that there has been 
“controversy over [Soyinka's] authenticity, obscurity, and 
difficulty” (1).  He cites the now well-known acerbic criticism of 
Wole Soyinka's poetry by the “Troika” of Chinweizu, 
Onwuchekwa Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike in their jointly-
published book entitled Toward the Decolonisation of African 
Literature, pointing out their strong attack on Soyinka's 
“obscurity, difficulty, and lack of authenticity” (2).  It would 
appear that many critics of African poetry queued up behind 
Chinweizu et al in their collective denunciation of Soyinka's 
poetry.  The phrase “failure to communicate” or “lapse of rigour” 
is nearly always used in condemning his poetry as has been 

suggested in Ojaide's book by critics such as Roderick Wilson who 
claims that Soyinka's performance only succeeds in highlighting 
his “deficiencies” (Wilson, 1973, 69 cited in Ojaide 2); and 
Omolara-Ogundipe-Leslie who also bemoans Soyinka's obscurity 
(Ogundipe-Leslie, 1976, I – IV cited in Ojaide 2).  Lewis Nkosi is 
no less unsparing in his assessment of Soyinka's poetry as he also 
accuses him of failing to communicate in his poetry (Nkosi, 1982, 
102).  The story is the same with Derek Wright's contention (1993, 
130), Niyi Osundare (Osundare, 1983, 3 – 5), Osofisan and Jeyifo 
(see “Introduction”, Songs of the Marketplace), and Funso 
Aiyejina (“Alter/Native Tradition”)

Tayo Olafioye in his book The Poetry of Tanure Ojaide 
appears somewhat ambivalent about the vexed issue of obscurity 
in Soyinka' poetry. He concedes that Soyinka's poetry is “difficult” 
but suggests in the same breath that such “difficulty” creates room 
for critical manoeuvring and affords protean interpretive 
engagements with the text.  Whilst other critics such as Chinweizu 
et al reject this polysemic overcoding, others stoutly celebrate it.  
Segun Adekoya, for instance, comes to the defence of this alleged 
obscurity of Soyinka's work, citing a variety of reasons for the 
obscurity of Soyinka's poetry.  Adekoya argues quite 
compellingly that Soyinka's obscurity is traceable to the complex 
nature of reality itself as well as the poet's attempt to capture this 
complexity of human experience through his deployment of 
astoundingly wide field of reference going to the farthest reaches 
of the globe.  He also notes that the obscure nature of Soyinka's 
poetry can be traced to his thorough immersion in the animist 
metaphysics of his native Yoruba culture.  And, part of the result of 
this immersion is the utilisation of paradox as the main trope in his 
work including prose fiction, drama and poetry.  Thus, Adekoya 
quips, “paradox is the tenor of his writing as well as his chief 
vehicle of expression.  It is the template of his literary enterprise.  
Indeed, it is elevated beyond a mere figure of speech to an artistic 

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



21 22

Great, the Arabic Conquest, Genghis-khan Conquest and lastly 
Tamerlane's.   Hence its culture was developed and mixed 
together with the Iranian, Indian, Mongolian and a bit of Western 
and Eastern cultures.

Samarkand is unique as a centre of Islamic scholarly study 
and the birthplace of the Timurid Renaissance. Dotted with domes 
of mosques and ancient mausoleums and holy shrines and 
madrasas, the ancient city of Samarkand is also the site of the 
famous Bibi-Khanym Mosque, said to be rebuilt during the Soviet 
era.  Samarkand, to be certain, has carefully preserved the 
traditions of ancient crafts such as embroidery, goldwork, silk 
weaving, copper engraving, ceramics, wood carvings and wood 
painting.  Islam is the main religion in Samarkand, which was 

thintroduced to the city in the 8  century during the invasion of the 
Arabs in Central Asian (Umayyad Caliphate).  Thus most of the 
inhabitants of Samarkand are Muslim, primarily sunni (mostly 
Hanafi) and sufi. As we earlier remarked, the city is distinguished 
as the crossroads of trade routes among China, Persia and Europe.  
However, historical records show that Samarkand has always 
been a battlefield of sorts for the world's leading Abrahamic faiths, 
viz: Christianity, Islam and Judaism.  The dominant faith 
practised at any point in time in the city has always been at the 
behest of the reigning power.  Fittingly, today, Samarkand is home 
to numerous Islamic, Christian and Russian Orthodox Church 
sects. The resultant schismatic situation in this famous civis 
constitutes part of the thematic concerns of “Samarkand and Other 
Markets I Have Known”.

A word or two on the two epigraphs, beginning with: “We 
take the Golden Road to Samarkand”.  This line was taken from 
James Elroy Flecker's verse drama Hassan … The Golden Journey 
to Samarkand published in 1922.  In his own poem, Soyinka 
deploys the journey motif derived from Hassan as well as from the 

method and a poetic technique” (4).

It is against this backcloth that we can begin to 
meaningfully appreciate the poetic method of Wole Soyinka, 
namely “the inner eye” strategy which frustrates literalism or/and 
the play of superficies.  With this in mind, we may be able to 
approach the poem in the collection entitled Samarkand and Other 
Markets I Have Known and do justice to its thematic concerns and 
formal strategies.  Soyinka uses as epigraphs two quotes, the one 
from the Yoruba culture (African) and the other, from Asia (non-
African).  The first epigraph reads:  “The world is a market place 
… (Yoruba song); the second reads: “We take the Golden Road to 
Samarkand”, a line taken from James Elroy Flecker's Hassan. The 
question to ask therefore, is: why does Soyinka use these two 
quotes as framing devices in this poem?  Let us begin with the 
lexical item “Samarkand”. What or where is Samarkand?  And 
why has the poet elected to use it in his poem?  Etymologically, the 
name Samarkand comes from sogdian samar, “stone”, “rock” and 
kard “fort”, “town” (see Google.com) Samarkand “ Uzbek” 
Samarqand, Persian: Samarqand), is a city in Southeastern 
Uzbeskistan and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in 
Central Asia (Wikipedia.com).  There is evidence of human 
activity in the area of the city from the late Palaeolithic Era, though 
there is no direct evidence of when Samarkand was founded; 

th th
several theories propose that it was founded between the 8  and 7  
centuries BCE.  Prospering from its location on the Silk Road 
between China and the Mediterranean Sea, at times, Samarkand 
was one of the largest cities of Central Asia (Wikipedia.com).  
Samarkand's official name is “Crossroads of Culture” and was 
also designated in 2001 UNESCO World Heritage site.  Besides, 
Samarkand is the capital of Tamerlane. It is situated in the valley of 
the river Zerafshan. It is the second largest city of Uzbekistan and 
is of the same age as the City of Babylon or Rome.  It has 
witnessed many upheavals during the times of Alexander the 

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



23 24

Some Etymological and Historical Contexts
Whilst religion is used by the powerful and the influential 

to wreak havoc and exterminate others who may not share their 
religious ideologies, trade is deployed as a weapon of choice to 
exploit and pauperise the poor.  Furthermore, Soyinka argues in 
his poem that religion is equally used as a basis for business 
transactions, of unequal economic exchanges.  That is to say, 
religion is not used as a medium of knowing or seeking God and 
living a holy life but for crass materialism and profiteering.  In a 
word, exploitation undergirds religious practice.

Some critics have attempted to explicate and interpret not 
just the poem under discussion but the entire collection.   Among 
these scholars and researchers include Niyi Akingbe, Charles Alex 
Patrick, Biodun Jeyifo and Segun Adekoya.  In his exegetical 
effort, Niyi Akingbe is primarily preoccupied with the protest 
tradition and how both Femi Fatoba and Wole Soyinka in their 
respective volumes of poetry launch a blistering and vitriolic 
broadside at the military establishment as a pseudo-corrective 
regime and at the reign of terror that was the infamous General 
Sani Abasha junta in particular.  Employing an exploratory 
strategy, Akingbe homes in on a few poems in the collection to 
underscore his focus on the use of protest and satire in Nigerian 
poetry (Akingbe, 2017, 28 – 53)

For his part, Charles Alex Patrick itemises the issues that 
Wole Soyinka wrote about during his period of exile induced by 
Abacha's murderous persecution of pro-democracy activists in 
Nigeria at the time.  Patrick singles out “tyranny, assassination, 
corruption and exile” as some of the foci of Soyinka's poetic gaze.  
Describing Nigeria under Abacha as “a socio-political junkyard” 
(95), Patrick furnishes an analytical explanation of a few poems in 
the collection, emphasising in the process Soyinka's anger at the 
deplorable state of affairs at the time (Patrick, 2019, 93 – 101).  

associative echoes intimating, among others, the atmospherics 
and socio-spiritual temper of the ancient habitus, Samarkand, a 
tone and temper of history which continue to inform and influence 
contemporary events.  Interestingly, this journey motif, borrowed 
from Hassan, dovetails seamlessly into the traditional Yoruba 
belief which is expressed in the song: “The world is market 
place…” (aiye l'ojà, orun nilé/ The world is a market place, 
heavenis home).  Soyinka, thus, seizes upon the two epigraphs to 
foreground the iconicity of market place; its universality.  But it 
would be grossly simplistic, if not downright myopic, to suggest 
that Wole Soyinka is in the context of this poem merely 
preoccupied with the economistic reverberations of the 
marketplace as a leitmotif.   Fundamentally, his sense and 
sensibility regarding this trope must be understood and interpreted 
from the viewpoint of the traditional Yoruba notion of 
marketplace as not just emporium but, crucially, as the human 
world or the Earth as we know it.  Small wonder, then, Soyinka, in 
this poem, regards every human habitation, be it a hamlet, village, 
town or city as marketplace where people haggle over and 
negotiate a better deal in existential terms.  It is in this regard, 
therefore, that, as our analysis of the poem shall demonstrate,  the 
poet ranges freely across time and space, problematizing  multiple 
temporalities and loci as he lyricizes the socio-economic, 
historical and spiritual/mystical dimensions of the market.

But beyond this lyrical or poetic celebration of the market 
as a locus of human activity and beyond highlighting the essential 
antiquity of the market trope through the use of the Samarkand 
trope, the poet is more interested, it would seem, in threnodising 
the twin evils of prejudice and exploitation which are propagated 
and disseminated through the instrumentality of religion and 
trade, respectively.  

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



25 26

A market is kind haven for the wandering soul
Or the merely ruminant.  Each stall
Is shrine and temple, magic cave of memorabilia.
Bargain hunters all, from pole to antipodes, 
annulling 
Time, evoking places and lost histories (49).

The market as “a kind haven for the wandering soul” bespeaks 
man as being at root an existential peregrine, a wanderer through 
life on earth, seeking watering-holes of fulfilment and lasting 
happiness in sundry activities both religious and secular: “Each 
stall is shrine and temple”.  All people are looking for in life is a 
better deal, hence Soyinka characterises everyone as “bargain 
hunter” in the emporium called life.  Used as a “play word that 
connotes several things” (Adekoya 512), Samarkand insinuates 
itself in stanza two into Johannesburg: “A market is where 
Samarkand invades Johannesburg, and, as the shutters 
close/Departs without regrets or trace” (49).  As earlier noted, 
Samarkand is the leitmotif for humans' living-spaces, the world 
itself.  Samarkand here represents the age-long, habitual temporal 
strivings of people, exertions which are as old as creation itself.  
Not even the passage of time can alter this human predisposition to 
crowd his/her life with activity which in turn invests human life 
with meaning.  Johannesburg in this context is an extension of 
Samarkand as locus of human habitation and activity.  Stanza 
three reads:

Chimes of faith assail the market place –
The muezzin's prayer alert, a shrine within the 
warren,
A lean-to church dispenses chants at war
With handbells (49).

The phrase “chimes of faith” announces the nature of the world as 
a site of religious activities.  Religion has been described as man's 

Thus, while Akingbe and Patrick try to throw some elucidatory 
light on some of the poems collected in Samarkand and Other 
Markets I Have Known, Jeyifo does not comment at all on the 
particular poem we are dissecting at the moment, that is, the titular 
poem.  Instead, he analyses rather breezily few poems in the 
collection (see Jeyifo, 2014, chapter six: “poetry, versification and 
the fractured burdens of commitment”, 220 – 276).

Segun Adekoya, however, meticulously dissects the 
thematic and structural features of all of the poems.  However, 
Adekoya's rather panoramic, and, hence, ambitious project of 
exploring all of Wole Soyinka's poems inevitably leaves a lot of 
textual silences and interpretive lacunae begging for further and 
more penetrating interrogation.  It is in the light of this research 
gap identified that this paper is poised to address.  We have 
adopted the Anglo-American New Critical concept of close 
reading in the textual explication of the poem.  Our choice is 
informed by the fact that  the New Critical approach is supremely 
apposite and appropriate for the exploration of the formal features 
of tension, ambiguity, irony and, more importantly, paradox.  As 
has been highlighted above, paradox is always at the heart of 
Soyinka's poetic method and worldview and what better theory is 
most suited for the analysis and interpretation of his poetry than 
New Criticism?  We shall, in the remainder of this paper, engage in 
disambiguating and unpacking the lines and stanzas of the poem, 
“Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known.”

Denouncing Prejudice and Exploitation 
Divided into five parts, the poem is highly critical of all 

forms of extremism – be it political or religious.  It makes a strong 
statement about human limitations, calls for a sense of balance, 
moderation, and proportion in all we do or think (Adekoya, 2006, 
511).

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



27 28

market and religion have been sites of both physical and spiritual 
activities, places where people go to have their physical and 
spiritual needs met.  Places of worship, however, equally double 
as trading centres, especially tourism, the memorabilia business 
where people buy and sell fancy bric-a-brac and other antique 
souvenirs. Accordingly, the seventh stanza “depicts the contiguity 
of religion and trade:

Trade and holy places, saints and salesmen
Have ever lived as soul companions, caterers
For the needs of flesh and spirit-bread
And water, wine and holy water, homilies 
Talismans and rosaries […] (50, Adekoya 513).
In stanza eight, Soyinka recalls the Biblical story of how 

Jesus Christ resorted to using the whiplash on traders and usurers 
who were selling and buying things right inside the Holy Temple, 
thereby desecrating it.  Soyinka confesses to envying the luck of 
these Bible-days merchants who got away with mere strokes of the 
cane for more grievous offences than the ones people commit 
these days and face stiffer penalties, including the death sentence.  
As a result of the intolerance and bloody-mindedness of the 
present-day, Soyinka in stanza nine holds up orisa worship of the 
Yoruba as the Gold Standard in religious tolerance and 
accommodation: 

Go to the orisa and be wise. Ifa
Shuns the excluding tongue… (51)

Apart from being rendered in italics for emphasis, the 
stanza highlights the unifying values of animism – the value of 
live and let live.  Unlike foreign faiths noted for gross abuse of the 
fundamental human rights of people, for instance, right to freedom 
of speech, freedom of conscience and association, the Ifa-
Orunmila, the Yoruba god of knowledge, order and wisdom, 
prioritises the paradoxical resolution of human problems and 
challenges.  Hence, Soyinka indirectly indicts Jesus Christ who 

search for God or man's way of making sense of the mysteries of 
life.  The “muezzin's prayer alert”, “a shrine,” “a lean– to church” 
and “white-robed dervishes”, all foreground the various belief-
systems and religious practices with which the world is riven.  
Even in isale-eko, i.e., downtown Lagos Island where the natives 
live, one can hear “Buddhist mantras” rending the air.  Such is the 
globalisation of religion in contemporary society.  Stanza four 
highlights the phenomenon of religious conflicts in society.  
Imported faiths operate side by side with indigenous African 
Traditional Religion, represented here by orisa worship by the 
Yoruba.  Claiming primacy and ownership of the land, the orisa 
(pantheon of gods and goddesses numbering hundreds) will not 
brook being shunted out of the limelight or being stifled or even 
“killed” by foreign imported religions such as Christianity, Islam, 
Judaism, Hare Krishna, and Buddhism.  Thus, “Tibetan souls” 
referred to in stanza five points to the followers of Buddha as 
exemplified by the Dala Lama of Tibet.  Wole Soyinka in effect is 
saying that Africa has been infiltrated by Oriental religions such as 
Buddhism and Hinduism that place high premium on asceticism 
and self-abnegation.  Stanza six reads thus:

Let all contend.  Let a hundred thousand
Flowers diffuse exotic incense and a million 
Stars perfume the sky … (50)

Here the poet preaches tolerance, inclusivity and diversity 
as an antidote against religious bigotry and zealotry which at 
present is ripping the world apart and laying it waste. Islamic 
fundamentalism, Zionism and other forms of religious persuasion 
are stoking the fire of prejudice and setting people against one 
another.  Soyinka echoes in equal measure Bertolt Brecht and 
Yoruba adage in this passage.  The Yoruba say that the sky is wide 
enough for a thousand birds to fly without clashing.  Brecht also 
expressed a similar sentiment bordering on freedom of access and 
equal opportunity.  In stanza seven, Soyinka agrees that both 

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



29 30

Beatrice, a comparison Adekoya finds inappropriate.  Yet Soyinka 
tells us that poets, lunatics, moralists, and lovers, dreamers and 
visionaries, all imagine an alternative Utopia of sensual bliss in 
“afterlife”, hence they all suffer from the incurable virus of 
quixotic yearning for post-apocalyptic Elysium.  Again, the 
reference to the “slumbering virgin” recalls John Keats's “Ode to 
the Grecian Urn”, Mona Lisa and other iconic sculptures which 
celebrate the myth of “a slumbering virgin”.  This myth is a 
variation on the dream motif, which itself animates all human 
endeavours.

The twelfth stanza opens thus:
And Samarkand? O Samarkand!
I cannot stroll through markets but I dread
Lest I see Samarkand again, yet long to see
How exchange has merged with change… (52)

Beyond the wordplay or punning implied in the line: “How 
exchange has merged with change…”, the poet-persona is here 
bemoaning the duplicity and fraud inherent in the heart of religion.  
He specifically references Matthew 5: 5 that says the meek shall 
inherit the earth.  But centuries on, after that declaration was made 
by Jesus Christ Himself, the millennial plight of the lumpen-
proletariat has not changed. They have not yet inherited the earth. 
They have not “metamorphosed/Into princesses and masters of 
the promised land” (52).  In stanza thirteen, Soyinka pooh-poohs 
attempts to break the buoyant and boisterous spirit of the African 
emporium; attempts to corrupt and stymy the African world 
distinguished by its communitarianism, its bonhomie and 
gregarious spirit of joie de vivre:

Such feeble scarecrows to my market mammas
Of Accra, Abidjan, Huambo, Cairo, Ibadan,
Plum mistresses of markets' riotous fare.
Queens/of fiesta, theatrics, courts of arbitration, crèche, 

but – (52 – 3).

claims that 
He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6)
But Soyinka contends: “Go to the orisa.  None but fools/claim 
guardianship of the final gateway” (51).

The tenth stanza unveils some dangerous, illegal contraband 
items, notably narcotic drugs such as cocaine, heroin and 
marijuana, which are being sold on the sly in the marketplace to a 
select clientele: “Fumes that ransack, then bare the mind/ To 
ecstasies unknown in ancient Samarkand …” (52). These lethal 
substances induce disturbed states of mind such as astral travel 
and levitation. The marketplace here is transformed by stealth into 
pseudo-religious centres, caverns of occult science, among others.  
Furthermore, the marketplace as uncharted territory, an off-limits 
space where mundane articles of trade are replaced with deadly 
weapons (such as Gatling guns) is the focus of the eleventh stanza 
of the poem.  

According to the poet, these weapons of mass destruction 
are used to prosecute both private and public wars, especially, of 
the religious variety.  The poet-persona references Dadi Fayed and 
the late Princess Diana as metaphor for fun-seeking tripsters who, 
like the moth, are burnt by the flames of hedonism. 

It is common knowledge how Fayed, the Egyptian 
billionaire, and Diana were hounded to death by European 
paparazzi in Paris, France in a tragic car accident.  Fayed is the 
“wandering prince” while Diana is the “slumbering virgin” 
referred to in the stanza.  However, Adekoya remarks that: “There 
is too much of muck and mortality in Diana for her to match 
Beatrice, a rare compound of untold beauty, heavenly splendour 
and stainless virtue, who leads Dante through Hell and Purgatory 
to the blessed Queen of Heaven” (515).  Thus, Soyinka alludes to 
Dante's Divine Comedy, thereby comparing Princess Diana to 

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



31 32

sequence starts thus: “O Samarkand.  Remember Samarkand?” 
(53) This is a refrain deployed as a mnemonic device to sustain 
audience participation as in a live theatrical performance which 
the logistics and mechanics of the poem clearly encourage.  If 
anything, the mere vocalisation of the word “Samarkand” evokes 
simultaneously the antiquity of the interfusion of trade and faith, 
both traditionally utilised as an instrument of economic 
exploitation, social exclusion and cultural prejudice as well as an 
organising principle for the world-as-marketplace.  It also figures 
as “Utopia” for humanity, the snag being that it is illusory, a will-o-
the-wisp.  This ironic and paradoxical “celebration” of 
Samarkand recurs throughout the entirety of the poem, especially 
from part III.

 Soyinka laments the high-handedness of the ruling socialist 
or communist party in the U.S.S.R. where dissent is terrorism or 
treason.  He debunks the propaganda of the party as “a straw 
masquerade” – a charade confected to hoodwink the credulous 
herd.  He denounces the bureaucratisation or the iron-fisted and 
rigid regimentation of the creative imagination of the citizenry.  
This often leads to a loss of faith in the dream (Adekoya 516).  
Thus, for the poet, officialdom stifles initiative and defeats 
enterprise leading to stasis, if not downright atavism.  In the 
sixteenth stanza, the poet switches from the first-person singular 
“I” pronoun denoting the poet-persona to the first-person plural 
pronoun “we” suggesting both the poet-persona and the reader-
listeners.  In a sense, “we” imbricates and corrals the 
audience/readership into a unanimity of opinion with the narrative 
(poetic) voice.  I/We coalesces into one against the adversarial 
“other”.  Accordingly, Soyinka and the audience are imaged as 
tourists or travellers surveying the topographic contours of the 
marketplace and trying to soak up the sights and sounds, and 
smells of the marketplace.  However, rather than encounter 
“bloom” and “shine” on the faces and skin of the people, we 

Accordingly, “the women of Soviet Samarkand are 
invisible, marginalised, and powerless.  Metaphorised as “feeble 
scarecrows” they constitute a false threat to capitalist controllers 
of the world market” (Adekoya 515).  Segun Adekoya notes that 
state regulation of socio-economic activities geared towards the 
actualisation of world communism is responsible for the Biblical 
misery and exploitation of the hoi-polloi, symbolised here by the 
Soviet women.  Thus, this spectacular show of the privation and 
poverty of the Soviet masses underscores the dismal and dreary 
failure of socialism.  The stark contrast between the luxurious 
lifestyle of the African “market mammas” and the deplorable 
living conditions of the “feeble scarecrows” (i.e., Soviet 
underclass) underscores the relative advantages of capitalism over 
socialism.  Little wonder, the poet sandwiches Naguib Mafouz, 
the Egyptian winner of the Nobel prize for literature, within this 
rich world of capitalist prosperity:

“It's there I pictured him.  Mafouz, his soul in tune/
With priests and peddlers of the souks (53).

Stanza fourteen is, perhaps, the diaphragm of the poem; its 
mid-point in which Soyinka changes gear and turns his attention to 
the contemporary scene.  He says: “the strings are muted”, 
meaning that there is a lowering of the volume of the celebratory 
temper and tenor of the preceding stanzas in response to the 
elegiac atmosphere of the present dispensation, a period in time 
where “continents have fallen to dry dirges, dropped/To thin 
laments beneath collapsing thatch.

To make a killing on the market now
May prove too literal, where zealots strut as middlemen
To market lords of unseen paradise (53).

Impliedly, the marketplace has been radically corrupted by 
the profit motive, by sheer mercantilism and, more poignantly, by 
incendiary forces of prejudice.  The third part of the poem-

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



33 34

we left Samarkand as a market town in Uzbekistan on a denotative 
level, but more significantly, “we” (i.e., poet and reader) missed 
the very essence of market which Samarkand symbolises.  The 
last two lines of the stanza simply tell us of how the poet hitches a 
train-ride and departs Samarkand more as a specific place than 
anything else, for Moscow.  He takes the same train that carried 
away “the missing cries” – the sounds, the hubbub of real living 
human beings, and heads for “Moscow's hidden stores”, meaning 
that he goes to Moscow in his storytelling trips (cf: Geoffrey 
Chaucer's The Canterbury's Tales) where he believes more illegal 
and unjust and unlawful business activities take place, 
unfortunately sanctioned by law.  This reveals the nauseatingly 
egregious hypocrisy of the socialist system, a system which 
thrives on exploitation (cf: Animal Farm).

Stanza eighteen speaks of a worse scenario in which what 
the poet had encountered before now pales into insignificance.  He 
says he feels as though he had moved “from frying-pan to furnace, 
from Slough of Despond/To turbid ponds named law of market-
forces…” (54).  This new place which he refers to as “A mafia 
kingdom”, where life and living are strictly regimented by state 
regulations and rules take away people's rights.  On the surface, 
thus, it appears “a consumer's paradise” where buying and selling 
take place without let or hindrance but in actual fact, it is a police 
state, although, as the two last lines suggest, the traders manage to 
give the authorities the slip by defiantly doing their own bidding: 
“an elixir of escape” (55)

In stanza nineteen, it seems as though things get worse as 
the poet moves from place to place in his peregrinations, as he 
observes the workaday activities of the market.  The rules of 
market forces are skewed to favour a few powerful people while 
the majority of the citizenry are short-changed and exploited.  He 
calls this situation “double counterfeit”.  He says here in the 

discover atrocious suffering induced by oppression, repression 
and mass impoverishment.  Only food items such as “tubers, 
pears, deep purple Aubergines, ponderous cabbages and lean 
spices…” (54) are displayed as though they are of greater value 
than the productive forces that grow and produce them:

Joy had fled the faces of the eternal women.
They lined the market outskirts, silently,
Winter twigs, dark shadows framed in rags
Limp greens outstretched; limp socks and shawls –
The regulation surplus they could hawk at will
For those few kopeks they would call their own (54).

Reference to “the eternal women” in stanza seventeen 
reminds us of Iya Agba and Iya Mate, both earth mothers or 
“witches” in the positive traditional Yoruba sense in Madman and 
Specialists, as does the reference to the “market outskirts” which 
equally brings to mind the activities of the mendicants shunted to 
the roadside in the same play.  That “joy had fled [their] faces” is 
tragic and very worrying because the market revolves around their 
joyous activities.  They are the producers of not just humans in 
their role as mothers, but they also sustain society as productive 
forces.  It might seem as if Soyinka is here being pro-feminist but 
he is just being realistic without being gender-conscious or 
partisan.  The issue of class, or of oppression appears to be more 
uppermost or paramount in his mind, in this regard.  The 
draconian regime of the Soviet authorities has stymied and 
hamstrung the women – the traders from doing their business and 
making profits.  Soyinka bemoans that “they lined the market 
outskirts […] the regulation surplus they could hawk at will/ for 
those few kopeks they would call their own” (54).  Thus, they 
could only eke out pittance with which they could barely scrape 
through.  In this market “no human sounds” are heard.  It has 
become a graveyard of human activity; a hecatomb of dreams.  
Consequently, “We bade adieu/To Samarkand …” that is to say, 

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



35 36

religious text, sanctions violence:
Holy or unclean, taboos proliferate.
Like the bazaars of Beirut, Algiers
Or Teheran, will a store display, an order form,
Satanic' music, poster, a fable on a tapestry,
A catalogue of books, second-hand merchandise
A dog-eared copy of Arabian Nights, a pamphlet poem –
Prove the trader's violent passport into paradise? (55 – 6)

As revealed in the excerpt above, the USSR regime rigorously 
represses and denies people their rights, reducing them ultimately 
to zombies and virtual slaves.  There is hardly anything to choose 
between life under the socialist Soviet State and Jihadist reign of 
terror as practised in the Middle East.  The twenty-first stanza 
simply adumbrates the focus on religious fundamentalism as 
practised in the Middle East.  Here the market is a busy site for 
“soul and sale”, i.e., for religion and business.  But in the charged 
universe of religio-economic activity, the lot of the common folk 
is much worse as “Dacoits of Deity”, i.e., hypocritical, self-
opinionated, Holier-than thou defenders of faith prowl the 
community killing anyone considered guilty of apostasy, heresy or 
blasphemy.  It is this age-old repressive and exploitative regime of 
zealotry in the Middle East, this reign of terror in, to echo 
President George W. Bush, the “Axis of Evil” that has defined that 
part of the world, thus:

They sanctify the blade, still dripping from its last jihad.
It carves a path through an old man's neck, but
The moving finger writes… though the ink of Kandahar 
Has turned to blood.  The heir of ancient dynasties
Of letters … Khorassan, Alexandria, Timbuktoo …. Lies 

sprawled
In the dirt and dust of a passage way (58).

market “barter is debased”, that is, no room is created for proper 
trade by barter and workers and traders live like beasts of burden.  
And Wole Soyinka execrates: “Samarkand, what bargain you have 
made! Utopia sold for this? Will Chernobyl pay wageless 
scientists/In enriched uranium, to solve the state's insolvency?” 
(55) Again, the very productive, life-sustaining essence of market 
is torpedoed by expediency, by state dictatorship, thus making it 
look as if Utopia has been exchanged for collective immolation 
which the Chernobyl metaphor indicates.

In a sense, stanza nineteen reveals the unimaginable 
degree of the debasement, the corruption of the essence itself 
instigated by the powerful in order to maintain the status quo.  The 
price for this is the mass sacrifice of the poor:

Or maybe – as Allah wills – since soul and sale
Have ever shared their space – Samarkand
Will turn the other sort, twin face of that
Tarnished paradise, whose sauce for goose
Was not for gander.  We bid adieu to
Kulak, comprador, bourgeois deviationist
Revisionist capitalist running dog false consciousness
… (55).

In stanza twenty, Soyinka is saying that the hapless people 
do not get any kind of reprieve.  When power-holders are tired of 
running their lives aground through the subterfuges of ideology – 
“kulak, comprador …”, they conveniently switch over to the use 
of religion as an instrument or tool for repression and rabid 
exploitation.  Just as it is in society, so it is in religious practices, 
or, as Wole Soyinka puts it, in “Tarnished paradise” – class 
consciousness is pervasive.  What is sauce for the goose is not 
sauce for the gander.  In this “Gulag”, “New heroes of the 
revolution” emerge, not hailing economic or political theory but 
“anointed text” probably the socialist text, which, like the 

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



37 38

freedom of conscience and association.  As highlighted earlier, it 
is curious that young minds would permit themselves to be 
brainwashed into fighting jihadist wars, engaging in terror attacks 
and wreaking havoc across the world in the hope of being 
rewarded with “Doe-eyed virgins” in paradise.  For Soyinka, this 
act of taking human life is simply unacceptable.  Hence, he 
counsels in stanza twenty-four:

It's time to raise the rafters, time
To chant the primal sanctity of man
Beyond coarse politics, beyond meagreness
Of race and faith, time to disinherit
Nationhood, episcopacies – we declare
This questing biped heir to cosmic legacies.
Who kills for love of god kills love, kills god,
Who kills in name of god leaves god
Without a name (56 – 7).

This is the clincher, the lodestar of Soyinka's artistic 
vision, a vision that derives in the main from the animist 
metaphysics of his Yoruba culture.  For him, therefore, “coarse 
politics”, “meagreness of race”, “faith” (or religion), 
“Nationhood” or “episcopacies” (sects) cannot measure up to “the 
primal sanctity of man”.  Human life is inviolate, supreme and 
superior to all creeds and must be treated with utmost respect.  
Man is the “questing biped” who is “heir to cosmic legacies”.  The 
entire world is his oyster, his home.  It is indefensible, therefore, to 
kill anybody in the name of any religion, or any god.  To kill a 
person is to kill love, and to kill love is to kill god (since, as the 
Bible says God is love) – to destroy the metaphysical ecosystem 
and render existence utterly meaningless.  It is this practice of 
killing in God's name that Soyinka poetises at great lengths in this 
poem as the following lines exemplify:

Adekoya copiously comments on the excerpt above thus: 
“The moving Finger Writes” is an allusion to 
Omar Khayyam, the great Persian poet born in 
Nishapur the capital of Khurasan, who, in 
Soyinka's view, is the “patron saint of all 
agnostics”.  His agnostic and epicurean 
philosophy can preserve the world and its 
peace, which are perpetually threatened by 
sword-wielding jihadists represented by a 
stool-pigeon, “the waiter-stalker, a youth/Fed 
on dreams of sarabands of houris”, that is, 
illusions of eternal bliss and carnal enjoyment 
in the afterlife (518 – 519).

 
Adekoya also explains that: “Houris are nymphs of the 

Muslim Paradise and four of them are believed to be reserved for 
every jihadist who dies fighting to advance the cause of Islam.  
Does the belief, or the hope of savouring “Doe-eyed virgins, wine 
and sweetmeats in the afterlife”, not expose jihadists as hypocrites 
and hedonists?” (519)

He is no alien.  No roots than his grow deeper
In the market place, no eye roved closer home… (57).

It is not particularly clear or obvious who “he” refers to 
here, but it is reasonable to assume that Soyinka is referring to 
Omar Khayyam who in The Ruba'iyat states his philosophy of life 
thus: “My rule of life is to drink and be merry.
To be free from belief and unbelief is my religion” (Omar 
Khayyam, The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. Peter Avery 
and John Health- Stubbs.  Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 
1981, p. 65 quoted in Adekoya 519).  In contradistinction to the 
admirable agnosticism and moderate irreverence of Omar 
Khayyam, the poet presents us with the gory image of bloodthirsty 
jihadists who violently snatch away people's right to life and 

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



39 40

the world even though they are “one-eyed arbiters”, i.e., they 
know pretty little about the mystery of human life, and yet arrogate 
to themselves omniscience and, hence, omnipotence.

In stanza twenty-seven, Soyinka muses on the paradoxical 
power of the religious mind-set which turns even the most 
sceptical into superstitious jellyfish.

We people artefacts/from ivory, skin and herbs, 
from aromatic wood/ sifts of powder 
guaranteed for ailments old and now/Dark 
mysteries in clay jars, beauty gels […]/Like 
fake piety, they exact veneration” (58).

The lexical item “still” is critical in that it alerts the reader to the 
obverse of the power of belief.  The world-as-market place might 
be filled with fakes and counterfeits, we have been socialised to 
accept them the way they are: probable bulwarks of equanimity: 
“their patina is peace”, the ironic poet intones.  Further, the poet-
traveller who also doubles as poet-raconteur chants the paean to 
globalisation and multiculturalism, two powerful forces sweeping 
across the world.  Regardless of where you are, the postmodern 
condition that facilitates the accelerated exchanges in everything 
ranging from telecommunications to trade and commerce has 
made it practically impossible not to be affected directly by 
outside influences, religion inclusive.  Thus, we share other 
cultures' taboos, mores, norms and superstitious and religious 
beliefs, be it Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, animism, 
etc.: “We share the gods of distant lands…” (58). Soyinka 
preaches understanding, tolerance and wisdom in the light of the 
confounding diversity of humanity.  He invites the reader to look 
beyond the superficies of quotidian life to come to grips with the 
unspoken, deep-seated painful concerns of common humanity: 
“Dirges of bereavement seep through ancient mats/ the ochre-
smeared antique, or a faded photograph – […] we jostle strangers 

The market place of hate is quartered on the pious tongue
But this the old man knew, yet kept his daily tryst 
With haggling cries, mock wars of merchandise
Mint tea and gossip, an avocation to observe and 
chronicle. 
He shares the dreams of Samarkand
With traders and the traded, with sinners
And the sinned against,
With infidels and the self-assured of paradise
A dream that never ends, a glimpse that still recedes,
That shimmering Golden Road to Samarkand (57).

The poet here emphasises the problem of religious 
fundamentalism and intolerance.  The old man is the voice of 
vision, the unsullied muse of memory who “observes and 
chronicles” the goings-on in this “market place of hate”, allowing 
people pursue their bent – traders and traded… (i.e., oppressors 
and the oppressed).  He nurtures the Samarkand dream of 
inclusiveness, and egalitarianism: “that shimmering Golden Road 
to Samarkand” (57).

 Stanza twenty-six further dramatizes movingly the poet-
persona's passionate plea for “one love”, given the fact that “the 
ocean meets the sea in a marketplace…” (57), there should be no 
artificial boundaries of class.  In other words, the doctrine of unity 
in diversity is promoted.  He also counsels that we must all nurture 
this dream of universal brotherhood and uniteagainst prejudice, 
exploitation and allied misanthropic practices.  For the poet, 
therefore, “The space of dreams remain [sic] inviolate/Egalitarian 
in the market place/though desecration stalks in priestly garb/ By 
surrogates, by one-eyed arbiters” (57).  It, thus, cuts him to the 
quick that society has allowed religion or/and religious 
proselytizers to sow schisms, rifts, and divisions among the 
colourful peoples of the world.  These hatemongers “desecrate” 

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



41 42

Aiyejina, Funso. “Alter/Native Tradition in Modern Nigerian 

Poetry”, Yemi Ogunbiyi (Ed.), Perspectives on Nigerian 

Literature: 1700 to the Present vol. 2, The Guardian Books 

(Nigeria/Limited, 1988, pp. 112 – 115.

Akingbe, Niyi. “Subverting Nationalism: Historicizing Horrors of 

the Past in Femi Fatoba's They Said I Abused the 

Government and Wole Soyinka's Samarkand and Other 

Markets I Have Known”, Matatu, vol 49, 2017, pp. 28 – 53.

Jeyifo, Biodun. “Introduction”, Niyi Osundare, Songs of the 

Marketplace. New Horn Press, 1983, pp. vii – xv.

- - - .  Wo l e  S o y i n k a :  P o l i t i c s ,  P o e t i c s  a n d  P o s t -

colonialism.Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Khayyam, Omar. The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam. Trans. Peter 

Avery and John Heath-Stubbs, Penguin, 1981, pp. 65.

Nkosi, Lewis. Tasks and Masks: Theme and Style. Oxford 

University Press, 1982, pp. 102.
Nwoga, Donatus I. “Obscurity and Commitment in Modern 

African Poetry”, E.D. Jones Editor African Literature Today 
6. Heinemann, 1973, pp. 10 – 30.

Ogundipe-Leslie, Omolara. “Ogun Abibiman”, Opon Ifa,vol I, no 
3, 1976, pp. i-iv.

Ojaide, Tanure.The Poetry of Wole Soyinka. Malthouse Press Ltd., 
1994, pp. 1 – 6.

Olafioye, Tayo. The Poetry of Tanure Ojaide: A Critical 
Appraisal. Malthouse Press Ltd., 2000, pp. 35.

Osundare, Niyi. Songs of the Marketplace. New Horn Press, 1983, 
pp. 3 – 6.

who turn guests and kin – the market is that kind of meeting place” 
(58).  Paradoxically, in spite of ancient pain and sorrow which are 
the lot of man, these same problems underscore the commonalities 
of the human race.

Conclusion
In the final analysis, both self and other are one, inseparable.  

The “inner eye” compels us all to discountenance external signs 
and symbols of xenophobia, exclusion and prejudice and 
appreciate the essential oneness of all humanity.  Death is a 
common leveller, regardless.  And it is death that draws the curtain 
on our earthly sojourn and leads us back home to the ancestor 
world where we await reincarnation to resume our “haggling 
cries” all over again – in Samarkand, the “market place of hate”.  
In concluding, it is important to remark that the poet in this poem-
sequence plays the traditional role of a satirist as practised in his 
native Yoruba oral culture.  According to Tanure Ojaide: “Soyinka 
[…] seems influenced by the etiyeri tradition of Yoruba satire.  
The poet is a masquerade, who wants to maintain the social and 
moral ideals of his environment.  In that pursuit, he ridicules and 
accuses violators” (Ojaide, 1994, 7).  Although Ojaide was 
writing about Soyinka's early poetry here, it is evident enough that 
his submission still holds true for Soyinka's later works, especially 
the poem under discussion.  A citizen of the world for whom there 
are no borders, Soyinka freely travels both literally and 
figuratively from “pole to antipodes” observing people's actions 
and critiquing them in equal measure with a view to upholding the 
ethical health of society.

Works Cited

Adekoya, Segun. The Inner Eye: An Oriel On Wole Soyinka's 

Works. Obafemi Awolowo University Press Limited. 2006, 

pp. 4, 511 – 17.

  Christopher Anyokwu (PhD): Saints of Lucre, Salesmen of Faith: Denouncing Prejudice 
                  & Exploitation in Wole Soyinka’s “Samarkand and other Markets I have Known”COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022



43 44

B e t w e e n  O r a l  a n d  W r i t t e n  L i t e r a r y  F o r m s : 
(Re)Understanding the Dichotomy

Dele Maxwell Ugwanyi
Department of English and Literary Studies

Enugu State University of Science and Technology,
Enugu

&
Richard Ifeanyichukwu Nnamani

Department of English and Literary Studies
Enugu State University of Science and Technology,

 Enugu

Abstract
Arguments about the contradiction of oral and written forms of 
work of art generally known as literature have been posited by 
many scholars. However, there are hardly studies on what 
primarily constitutes oral literature and the correctness and 
appropriateness of the phrase and the literariness of those 
constituents. The seeming negligence on this critical perspective 
may be motivated by the fact that folklore, orality and oral heritage 
are mistaken to mean oral literature by many scholars which is an 
obvious misconception of the discipline. Even though early 
researchers on the field of oral literature were not literary scholars, 
it is pertinent that the misconception about the field is corrected 
and the record set straight. This paper, therefore, concerns itself 
with proper categorisation of what oral literature is not with keen 
conceptualisation of the literariness of what constitutes oral 
literature; attempt is also made to invite scholars to a consideration 
of a universalised categorization of genres of African oral 
literature. Drawing insights from classical literary theories and 
hermeneutics, the core of oral literature is established thereby 
filtering out what were hitherto mistaken to be oral literature. 
Fur thermore ,  ora l  l i te ra ture  i s  cont ras ted  wi th  i t s 

Patrick, Charles Alex. “The Role of Anxiety and Anger in Wole 
Soyinka's Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known.” 
IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities, vol. 6, Issue 2, 
November 2019, pp. 93 – 101.

Soyinka, Wole. A Shuttle in the Crypt.Methuen, 1971.

--- Idanre and Other Poems.Methuen, 1967.

--- Madmen and Specialists. University Press Limited, 1971.

---Mandela's Earth and Other Poems.Random House, 1988.

---Ogun Abibiman. Rex Collins, 1978.

--- Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known.Methuen, 2002.
Wilson, Roderick. “Complexity and Confusion in Soyinka's 

Shorter Poetry”, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 
vol 8, no 1, 1973, pp. 69.

Dele Maxwell Ugwuanyi & Richard Ifeanyichukwu Nnamani: Between Oral and Written 
                                                                  Literary Forms: (Re) Understanding the Dichotomy

COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2022


	Page 9
	Page 10
	Page 11
	Page 12
	Page 13
	Page 14
	Page 15
	Page 16
	Page 17
	Page 18
	Page 19
	Page 20
	Page 21
	Page 22

