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Sandra L. Richards. Ancient Songs Set Ablaze: The Theatre of Femi Osofisan. Washington, D.C. Howard University Press. 1996. xxvi + 210 pages, ill. $29.95. ISBN 0-88258-109-0.
Sandra L. Richards's Ancient Songs Set Ablaze: The Theatre of Femi Osofisan is undoubtedly the first serious book-length study not only of Femi Osofisan's plays but of the entire generation of African "new writers" who have a love-hate relationship with their widely known predecessors, Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, and J. P. Clark-Bekederemo. As Richards understands (and Harold Waters misunderstands in his recent review of New Poets of West Africa, edited by Tijan M. Sallah; see WLT 70:3, p. 746), the term new or second generation of African writers is used to apply to those African writers who came into prominence after the Nigerian civil war and the energy crisis of the 1970s. Richards, unlike many Western critics of African literature in recent times who postulate ignorantly on African literature, displays overwhelming empathy for and knowledge of what she writes about. It is significant that instead of judging African literature/theatre by Western esthetic standards, she acknowledges from the beginning that "Western dramatic terminology requires expansion to suit an African environment." By this, she implies the validity of African esthetics. She also overcomes the mountain of essentialism by adequately preparing herself for the study of Osofisan's plays not just by living in Nigeria for two years but by...