We Live, only if the Environment Lives; An Enquiry into
Niyi Osundare’s Eco-poems

Oguntuase Adebayo Adefemi; Obura Oluoch; Amateshe Kisa

doi:https://www.doi.org/10.56201/ijelcs.v7.no1.2022.pg1.15

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We Live, only if the Environment Lives; An Enquiry into Niyi Osundare’s Eco-poems

Oguntuase Adebayo Adefemi, Obura Oluoch & Amateshe Kisa

Abstract

This paper sets out to investigate the symbiosis between humankind and the environment that they inhabit. The relationship between the denizens of the earthly environment and the lifelong interdependence of both flora and fauna are examined in this work. Two of the volumes of poetry by Niyi Osundare are used in the treatment of the themes of this study. These are: Waiting Laughters (1990) and The Eye of the Earth (1996). The literary theoretical approach known as ecocriticism is deployed in the study of the poems selected from both collections. The study is further underpinned by the Reader Response critical theory. The paper concludes that a mutually rewarding co-existence is the only prescription for an augury of pleasure and sustainability between the environment, on the one hand and humankind, on the other

References

Achebe, C. Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann, 1958. Amani, W. The Dramatic Structure of Niyi Osundare’s Waiting Laughters. CSE Vol. 1 2017 Glotfelty, C and Harold, F. (ed) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1996. Goldestein, Donna M. Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence and Sexuality in Rio Shantytown. U of California Press, 2013. Osundare, N. The Eye of the Earth. Heinemann Educational Books (Nigeria), 1996 ...,Waiting Laughters. Lagos: Malthouse Press, 1990 Phillips, James J. “Resistance Is Carried Out in a Positive and Optimistic Sense” Honduras in Dangerous Times: Resistance and Resilience. Lexington Books, 2015. Rosenblatt, Louise. Literature as Exploration. U of Illinois Press, 1968 ...,The reader, The text and the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work . Southern Illinois UP. 1978. Rueckert, William. Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism. Iowa Review (71-86). 1978 Simon, Estok. “A Report Card on Ecocriticism” AUMLA: Journal of Australian Universities Language and Literature Association 96, 8 Nov. (2001): 220-38. Slovic, Scott. “Ecocriticism: Containing Multitudes, Practising Doctrine” The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. (ed) Laurence Coupe. Routlegde, 2020. Stanley, Fish. Is There a Text in this Class? Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980. Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. New York: Routledge, 2006

We Live, only if the Environment Lives; An Enquiry into Niyi Osundare’s Eco-poems

Abstract

References

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