So many of our questions about a history of Yoruba art, society, and culture revolve around the mythic status of Ife1 as the source, the cradle (Akinjogbin 1992), the very genesis (Fabunmi 1985) of Yoruba, with the mythic descent of the gods from the sky at the beginning of time. This is a popular view. On the other hand, there is the more mundane recognition that “Yoruba” is a modern ethnicity emerging, more or less, in the period 1850–1950 (Peel 2000). In this reading, “Yoruba” is a coming together of several centers, each with its specificity; Ife is but one—mightily important of course, but still only one—among a series of overlapping centers and peripheries, each with its own name and identity, that comprise the “more-or-less” region that today we have learned to call “Yoruba,” or “the Yoruba,” or “Yoruba-land,” or “the Yoruba-speaking peoples.”...
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
Summer 2018
June 01 2018
Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300
Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300
by Suzanne Preston
Blier
New York
: Cambridge University Press
, xxiv + 574 pp.; 52 color ill., 159 b/w ill., bibliography, index. $118.00 hardcover; $39.99 paper
Online ISSN: 1937-2108
Print ISSN: 0001-9933
© 2018 by the Regents of the University of California.
2018
The Regents of the University of California
African Arts (2018) 51 (2): 92–95.
Citation
Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300. African Arts 2018; 51 (2): 92–95. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00409
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Client Account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Could not validate captcha. Please try again.
Sign in via your Institution
Sign in via your InstitutionEmail alerts
176
Views
Advertisement
Cited By
Related Articles
Art in Ancient Ife, Birthplace of the Yoruba
African Arts (December,2012)
A Reconsideration of the History and Iconology of Yorùbá Equestrian Figure through Two Ifá Verses and the Ojúde-Ọ ba Festival
African Arts (May,2022)
Before Us a Savage God: Self-Fashioning the Nation in YorùbÁ Performance
TDR/The Drama Review (June,2011)
Funmilayo Ranco: Feminist Self-Assertion in Late-20th-Century Yoruba Traveling Theatre
TDR/The Drama Review (March,2019)
Related Book Chapters
Patterns of Reduplication in Yoruba
The Nature of the Word: Studies in Honor of Paul Kiparsky
Ancients and Moderns
Isaac Newton on Mathematical Certainty and Method
Love in the Ancient World
The Nature of Love, Volume 1: Plato to Luther
Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA: An Introduction
Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA