SOURCE: Wright, Derek. “The Festive Year: Wole Soyinka's Annus Mirabilis.” Journal of Modern African Studies 28, no. 3 (September 1990): 511-19.

In the following essay, Wright investigates Soyinka's 1960 Rockefeller Foundation scholarship research project on traditional African festivals and traces the impact of this research on his work, particularly as seen in the play A Dance of the Forests.

It was in 1960, the year of independence and therefore a time of celebration and festivities in Nigeria, that Wole Soyinka, after just over five years in Britain (three at the University of Leeds and two at the Royal Court Theatre, London), returned to his native land. This was moreover, according to some sources, a period in which he undertook empirical research into festivities of a different kind, which subsequently supplied a specific input into the ritualism of his early plays.

There has been some critical uncertainty about the precise nature of the Rockefeller...