Parallels and Distinctions in Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomy and “Orpheus and Eurydice”

Criticism of Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomy alongside the Greek mythological story of “Orpheus and Eurydice” has usually been an engagement in drawing parallels between both texts, or of uncovering symbols and allusions found within the novel that echoes the Greek myth. None, however, has explored at the same time the range of similarities and dissimilarities between both narratives; nor is there available a sustained attention devoted to the criticism of both. This study fills that critical vacuum. The question thus opened up is that there are convergences as well as divergences in the narratives; and although Season of Anomy is not without borrowings from the Greek mythology which constitutes the convergences and to some extent informs some of the divergences, the novel’s trajectory and imaginative framework transcend the classical story.  Julia Kristeva’s notion of the figure of “double destinations” under her theory of intertextuality is brought into play in this study to make sense of the parities and disparities between both accounts.