SOURCE: "From the Labyrinth to the Temple: The Structure of Okigbo's Religious Experience," in Okike: An African Journal of New Writing, No. 24, June, 1983, pp. 57-69.

In the following essay, Ogundele argues that Okigbo's religious views, as expressed in his works, were much broader and more autobiographical than critics have considered them to be.

The exact place and function of 'religion' in Christopher Okigbo's poetry has been until lately, generally misrepresented. The misrepresentation of course stemmed from what critics and some writers held, in the last two or so decades, to be one of the imperatives of the then nascent neo-African literature: cultural assertion. Even when the writers themselves, Okigbo inclusive, insisted to the contrary, their views were either derided, denounced with anger or pity, or simply judged to be of no account in the whole business of discovering relevances and functions.

This theoretical distortion led to two types...