Death and The King’s Horseman Yoruba Proverb Globe

Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman is perhaps the Nobel-Prize-winning playwright's greatest and most enduring work. Published in 1975, the work is often studied and performed in colleges and universities, as well as staged worldwide. Death and the King’s Horseman is based on real events in Oyo, an ancient Yoruba city of Nigeria, in 1946. It is five acts, and is to be performed without an intermission. Critics celebrate the play for its critical stance on imperialism, the insights into Yoruba religion and ritual, the range of characterization, and the accomplished prose and poetry woven into the play.

The proverb, a short saying which reveals some significant truth, is itself a work of art. Yoruba proverbs are often considered a living art form, due to their complexity and metaphorical density. One could argue that Yoruba proverbs are the living chapels of Yoruba culture. Visual art has long been a method of preserving narrative history, from Michaelego’s Sistine Chapel, Diego Rivera’s Mexican murals, to the early Egyptian hieroglyphs and temple reliefs, images have been used to tell stories. In this project students responded to the Yoruba proverbs with images that reflect the meaning of their chosen Yoruba proverbs. Students found thirty proverbs in the text, and after describing their significance to the characters and themes of the text, students drew a visual representation of each proverb, incorporating each into a larger illustrated globe.