Dionysus And Scapegoat

Wole Soyinka,a Nigerian writer who grew up in the Yoruba tribal society has accepts western education systematically.Influenced by Yoruba traditional culture,Hebrew and Greek cultures and western modern literature,the cultural components of his work are diverse.Ogun,a god of metal,war and road,is the representative of Yoruba's traditional culture and the main object of Soyinka's description.Soyinka is not satisfied with the uniform quotation of Ogun's image.He consciously jumps out of the local cultural perspective in his literary creation,uses the perspective of Western Hebrew and Greek cultures to examine Yoruba's culture,and carries out creative rewriting of Ogun's image.This paper is mainly divided into three parts: introduction,subject and conclusion.In the introduction part,the author gives a brief introduction to Soyinka's life and the research of his works.The main body of the article is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly combs Ogun's myth of Yoruba and introduces Soyinka's rewriting of Ogun's image in poetry and theory work.Secondly,it introduces Soyinka's skilled reference and application to Hebrew and Hellenistic Culture,and constructs the connection between Ogun and the image of Dionysus and Scapegoat.Chapter two analyses the similarities between Ogun and Dionysus in terms of duality and destructive-creative function,and to highlight the collective consciousness of the Yoruba people contained in the image of Ogun,which is similar to the democratic spirit of Dionysus which but has it's local characteristics.Chapter three discusses a kind of characters with the characteristics of Hebrew scapegoats in Soyinka's works.They purify,redeem and bring new life to the collective by imitating the purification and passage rituals of Ogun.Finally,the conclusion summarizes the article.Soyinka's rewriting of Ogun's image with the characteristics of Dionysus and Scapegoat is an attempt to examine traditional culture from the perspective of foreign culture.It calls forheroes with Ogun's spirit of creation and sacrifice to come forward and save Nigeria from the evil of war.In examining traditional culture from the perspective of foreign culture,it also has an impact on reality,which is the expression of Soyinka's superb literary creativity,and also the reason why his works have attracted worldwide attention.