Gray, Rosemary A.2016-11-302016-11-302012Rosemary Gray (2012) Mythic Conjunctions in Transit: Ontopoiesis in Ben Okri's An African Elegy and Mental Fight and Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt , Journal of Literary Studies, 28:4, 25-37, DOI: 10.1080/02564718.2012.735066.0256-4718 (print)1753-5387 (online)10.1080/02564718.2012.735066http://hdl.handle.net/2263/58316Drawing on Ben Okri’s A Time for New Dreams (2011) and Wole Soyinka’s Myth, Literature and the African World ([1976]1995), this article adopts a literary aesthetics approach, explaining that mythic conjunctions are inherent in ontopoiesis or the selfinduced develop-ment of consciousness (Tymeniecka 1992). Okri (2011: 27) argues that self-creativity or innovation “come from being able first to see what is there, and not there; to hear what is said, and not said …. And … the art of intuition”, whereas for Soyinka ([1976]1995: 3) “man’s attempt to externalise and communicate his inner intuitions” gives rise to cultural mythology. “In Asian and European antiquity ... man did, like the African, exist within a cosmic totality, did possess a consciousness in which his own earth being, his gravity-bound apprehension of self, was inseparable from the entire cosmic pheno-menon,” he asserts (p. 3.). The poems selected reveal that mythic conjunctions are inherent in such non-dualistic insights. In Okri’s poetry (1992 & 1999), a higher state of consciousness or “illumination” is the basis for life’s transitions wrought largely through spirit awakenings via a retrieval of traditional geocosmic horizons; in Soyinka’s (1972), such transitions accrue from a conscious reconstruction of the human self, affected by the trauma of solitary confinement.en© JLS/TLW. This is an electronic version of an article published in Journal of Literary Studies, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 25-37, 2012. doi : 10.1080/02564718.2012.735066. Journal of Literary Studies is available online at : http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjls20.Mythic conjunctionsSelf-creativityCommunicatePostprint Article