Cognitive and Perceptual Modes in Wole Soyinka’s “Prisonettes”

Prison literature has constituted an interesting area of study in literary scholarship, partly because critics have always recognised its capacity to record and perpetuate important human beliefs and ideologies. Prison poetry in particular has enjoyed a pride of place amongst prison literature in Africa. Some of the foremost African authors have chosen to reflect on their prison experience in poetic form (Dennis Brutus, Okot p’Bitek, Jack Mapanje, etc.), perhaps, in addition to other factors, because of the compactness of the form which would seem to suit the constraints imposed by prison conditions while preserving monumental human ideals. The poetry treated in this particular study is the political prison poetry and deserves to be viewed in this light. The study examined prison poetry by Wole Soyinka and adopted the theory of phenomenology to interpret poems selected from Wole Soyinka’s A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972). Foregrounded in this study are two modes of consciousness - cognition and perception – which are essential elements of prison poetry, and means of ‘breaking into’ the experiential patterns inherent in a literary work of art. The study highlighted the poet’s abusive ferocity as a reaction against Nigerian political aggressiveness and the manner of his coping with the situation.