Ṣàngó’s Incest, Oxala’s Equanimity and the Permanence of African Myth-Legends in Atlantic Yorùbá Dramaturgy

Abstract

This article discusses the permanence of Yorùbá myth-legends in Atlantic Yorùbá dramaturgy. The dramaturgy is conceived as a genre of Atlantic Yorùbá literature produced by the scions of Yorùbá slaves in the New World and some òrìṣà worshippers in the Americas who claim an affiliative relationship with continental Yorùbá. I argue in favour of a myth-legend taxonomy of oral prose narratives as against the Western classification of traditional tales into myth, legend and folktale. Yorùbá traditional tales, also called pataki by the Atlantic Yorùbá, are dubbed myth-legends due to the shared features of myths and legends immanent in them. The article examines these traditional tales, drawing insights from psychoanalytic and postcolonial models to foreground the Ọbàtálá–Jesus parallelism, primeval rivalry between Ṣàngó and Ògún, and the paraphilia of certain Yorùbá hero-gods. It affirms the Euhemerisation of these deities to accentuate their apotheosis and possession of human attributes.