Tragedy and Threnody in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman

Abstract

This paper focuses on the trans-generational contributions of three literary practitioners-cum-theorists, namely Aristotle, Sophocles, and Wole Soyinka, to the dramatic concept of song, music, and tragedy. While Aristotle’s idea of tragedy, based on Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex, is monological and monolithic, and Soyinka’s idea of tragedy is polydactyl and polygonal, their contributions to the epistemology and application of song and/or music to tragedy in art and philosophy are significant, dialectical, profound, and robust. This paper examines song and/or music as important elements in the definition and realization of tragedy in Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex and Soyinka’s Death and The King’s Horseman. The paper is guided by both mimetic and mythological theories. In conclusion, we agree with Aristotle (and with Soyinka), that tragedy can only be “serious, complete and of certain magnitude” when it is realized through threnody.