INSCRIBING THE ENVIRONMENT: AN ECO-CRITICAL STUDY OF THIRD-GENERATION NIGERIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH

OLUSEYE, ABIODUN BABATUNDE (2020) INSCRIBING THE ENVIRONMENT: AN ECO-CRITICAL STUDY OF THIRD-GENERATION NIGERIAN POETRY IN ENGLISH. ["eprint_fieldopt_thesis_type_phd" not defined] thesis, Covenant University Ota..

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Abstract

Ecocriticism is a new thinking that envisions and advocates a strong harmony between biotic and abiotic agents that must cohabitate in a new planetary community and in complementarity for their survival and sustenance. The concept seeks to reformat age-old default thinking premised on anthropological standpoints of perceiving nature as a passive habitat of objects. Ecocriticism, therefore, seeks to locate in literary works, an interpretative importance for nature and such other environmental categories such as land, air, water and forests, among others. Recently, the world has witnessed and is yet battling with a spate of global ecological incidences that have created palpable fear that the destruction of the world may be nearer than imagined. Some of the present day dire environmental challenges which need to be reversed include climate change, loss of biodiversity, drought, land degradation, and pollution among others. The attendant shift to eco-critical concerns catalysed into the birth of ecocriticism first spawned in America and later extended to other climes. The late reception of ecocriticism in Nigeria, otherwise eco-hesitation, is traceable to the socio-political concerns which the literature seems not to slough off. But in its little gestation, many Nigerian writers, especially with the Niger Delta as experimentation field, have reflected the environment along eco-critical precepts and architecture. At the core of most ecological problems is nonchalance by humans, poetry is therefore considered a potent medium of achieving the desired attitudinal change in humans especially in correcting the notion that nature is meant to be exploited, despoiled and degraded. This study is therefore anchored on yielding a future environmentalism based on poetry's ability to raise socio-environmental dilemmas through its engagement with the past, the present and being able to redirect the future in the desired way for the good of the world. This study looks at six representative collections from the corpus of recent Nigerian poetry in English namely: Tade Ipadeola, The Sahara Testaments (2012); Tade Ipadeola, The Rain Fardel, (2005); Ogaga Ifowodo, A Good Mourning (2016); Ogaga Ifowodo, The Oil Lamp (2005); Remi Raji, Sea of My Mind (2013); and Ahmed Maiwada, We’re Fish (2017). These six collections sufficiently parade rich eco-critical consciousness extensive enough to form the contextual ground upon which this study is situated. The research is library-based and the research tool is ecocriticism. The study through the various texts was able to establish a strong ecocritical current running through most recent Nigerian poetry in English. It was able to show a synergetic parallel between human and nature. It also revealed that Nigerian literature is fast responding to the new dictates of ecocriticism. This study further showed in a number of ways how ecocriticism is opening new frontiers for Nigerian literature and how the concept has become a major cultural expression of foregrounding culture within the ambience of ecocriticism. The study also discovered how the concept has become a major platform of projecting ecological issues arising in the Nigerian society. The study revealed a heightened eco-critical consciousness in the works of third-generation Nigerian poets.

Item Type:	Thesis (["eprint_fieldopt_thesis_type_phd" not defined])
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Agents, Ecocriticism, Eco-hesitation, Ecological Incidences, Environmental categories, Nigerian poetry.
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Divisions:	Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences > School of Humanities
Depositing User:	Mrs Patricia Nwokealisi
Date Deposited:	09 Aug 2021 15:47
Last Modified:	09 Aug 2021 15:47
URI:	http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/id/eprint/15277

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