Abstract
The traditional pagan view of human tragedy which existed several centuries back in the ancient Greek religious myths was transposed not only to Western Europe but also to the African context in the literary representation of reality in tragedy. Common religious metaphysics across cultures occasionally occasion common conception of human tragedy across generations of human history, but such cosmological cross-cultural convergence does not take for granted their dynamic perspectives on the role of fate in human tragedy. To be sure, the audiences of each time, view and appreciate tragedy within their unique geo-political and cultural milieu. In this sense, Erich Auerbach’s new historicist reading and post-modern montage of texts and commentaries validly confirms humanity’s representation of reality from their religious and traditional customary dispensations across space and time. Coming into the world in the West African Nigerian Yoruba metaphysical universe, the tragic personage holds his fate in his own hands. The gods and supernatural beings in the invisible realms claim foreknowledge of the fate which the tragic hero brings into the world, yet do not influence the fate-holder in the winding trail of life to the fulfillment of tragic fate. The gods in the mythico-religious worldview of the Yoruba natives permit the fulfilment of prehistoric fate based on the fate-holder’s individuality, as dictated by his carnal nature. This paper therefore posits that tragedy occurs as a product of the constant working of fate in the tragic hero which fulfills itself in a tragic conflict through the hero’s free-will, according to the prophecy of the gods in Ola Rotimi’s The gods are not to blame. This is more so in the Aristotelian concept of catharsis in tragedy due to the interplay between prehistoric fate and historic fate, the latter being the product of the former. 
 
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Highlights
Aristotelian description of ancient Greek tragedy in the Poetics has largely influenced its literary representation across western and African societies, even though such representations vary according to the mythico-religious perspectives of the practitioners
The African and for that matter the Nigerian Yoruba exist, like European antiquity within a cosmic totality and possess a double consciousness of self, of his “earth being, his gravity-bound apprehension of self” and “the entire cosmic phenomenon” (Myth, Literature and the African World, p. 2, 3). This metaphysical orientation of man and his spiritual link with the invisible world explains why the gods have a foreknowledge of the fate which the tragic hero brings to life, and the reason why the Yoruba divine the cause of death or tragedy from the gods during or after one’s departure from earthly existence
He, still confident about knowledge becomes foolhardy, and this foolhardiness, becomes the hubristic tendency of his mortal fate which plunges him into deeper turmoil, and he becomes conscious of the truth about himself only at the eleventh hour wherein is inexorable fearful death
Summary
Aristotelian description of ancient Greek tragedy in the Poetics has largely influenced its literary representation across western and African societies, even though such representations vary according to the mythico-religious perspectives of the practitioners. Beyond cultural politics and ideology, Greco-African myth transposition seeks to emphasize the unique metaphysical conception of fate as it pertains to the religious cultures, besides stressing the significance and universality of religious tradition across cultural boundaries For this reason, The gods are not to blame even though investigates a historical conflict of cultures, it is a “cautionary tale of leadership and fate”, more than addressing “interethnic mistrust” The first is a review of the concept of catharsis within the Aristotelian definition of tragedy in his Poetics for a better understanding of the role of fate in tragedy This is followed by a review of Auerbach’s reading of Greek and Renaissance representation of fate in tragedy, to give a sense of the methodology used in this study and as a springboard for understanding fate in the West African Nigerian Yoruba context, which comes in the caption: “The African Nigeria Yoruba Context”. The penultimate section deals with the analysis of the selected text - The gods are not to blame, and the final section is the Conclusion
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