Eos
A Scholarly Society Dedicated to Africana Receptions of Ancient Greece and Rome

READS

READS introduces Classicists to seminal works from the African diaspora so that they may be incorporated into course curricula. Each year READS features one work or a related set of texts for discussion at the invitation of institutions and as recurring programming at national and regional conferences.

 

2019: Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae

 
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Wole Soyinka’s The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite (1973) weaves Yoruba mythology and contemporary political and social issues into Euripides’ play. Soyinka was a Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist, and political activist, and the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1986). As Soyinka says: “The Bacchae belongs to that sparse body of plays which evoke awareness of a particular moment in a people’s history, yet imbue that moment with a hovering, eternal presence.” The play’s emphasis on ritual sparagmos has recently been analyzed by Justine McConnell as a model for thinking about Classical Reception as a destructive-creative process of ripping apart and re-membering, particularly in the African Diaspora.

In 2019, Eos hosted a discussion of this play at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (plans for other sessions that academic year were disrupted by COVID-19). In 2023 the Soyinka READS was part of the annual meeting of the Classical Association of New England (with thanks to Dominic Machado).

READS, CONFERENCEEos: Africana Receptions of Ancient Greece and Rometragedy, drama, nigeria, euripides, athens