PostcolonialSparagmos: Toni Morrison’sSulaand Wole Soyinka’sThe Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite

Abstract

This article argues that the Greek idea of sparagmos (tearing apart) offers an illuminating metaphor to describe creative artists’ engagement with antiquity. The violence and fertility innate within sparagmos are particularly appropriate to postcolonial receptions of classical literature, as will be demonstrated by examining Toni Morrison’s novel, Sula , and Wole Soyinka’s play, The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite , both published in 1973. While the latter proclaims its debt to antiquity in the title, the former plays a more elusive game by engaging with a number of ancient Greek texts (none explicitly), before going on to defy our classically-infused expectations. Sula ’s primary classical antecedent is Sophocles’ Ajax , but that tragedy is ripped apart and its dismembered remains scattered throughout the novel before being ‘re-membered’ in a form of compositio membrorum (gathering together of limbs). Soyinka’s engagement with Greek tragedy is more direct, and the sparagmos is seen not so much in his approach to classical literature as in the action of the play, as well as in his critique of Nigeria’s contemporary political scene. Together, these two case-studies demonstrate the potential inherent in the trope of sparagmos as a metaphor for classical reception, particularly in the sphere of postcolonial literature.