Ideological Intersections in Luigi Pirandello’s Right You Are! and Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed

Abstract

Ideological reflection in a play-text has often served as the hallmark of a playwright’s identity (Akoh, 2006a). In fact, the dramatization of ideology has continued to hold sway in the African and Western literary traditions, and this has made it difficult to interpret a play-text outside of the ideological frame of its author. For example, the play-texts of Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, Athol Fugard, Zulu Sofola, Femi Osofisan and so on, are better understood when the ideologies of these playwrights are contextualised. The fact remains that not much attention has been paid to the comparison of the plays of Luigi Pirandello and Wole Soyinka who are substantially ideological in their writings but ironically reject being pegged to (m)any ideology(ies). In other words, ideologies of individualism and collectivism in the plays of Luigi Pirandello and Wole Soyinka as well as the transition of these two Nobel Laureates from one ideological enclave to the other has not received much juxtaposition to our notice. This study, therefore, compares the diverse shades of ideologies in Luigi Pirandello’s Right You Are! which is fully titled, Right You Are! (If You Think So) and Wole Soyinka’s The Strong Breed. The study hinges on the theoretical premise of Seymour Lipset’s (1972) concept of Ideoaesthetics as modified by Dennis Akoh (2015) complemented with the textual analysis method of research. The study uncovers certain areas of convergence in both playwrights’ ideologies such as the handling of the fourth wall, dialectics and the superiority of the human mind/will, and the embrace of messianic imperatives.