ECONTEXTUALIZING ENGAGEMENT AN ECOCRITICAL PERSPECTIVE ON IBIWARI IKIRIKO'S OILY TEARS OF THE DELTA AND TANURE OJAIDE'S WAITING FOR THE HATCHING OF A COCKEREL

📄 Project Abstract

There is no doubt that Nigerian literature has been seen as a tradition that is useful, functional; that is engaged. That engagement has been, in the most part, socio-political and cultural. Nigerian literature has been critically acclaimed to be committed to critiquing unwholesome social, political and cultural issues giving birth to such terms as 'political commitment', 'social commitment' and 'cultural commitment'. The texts from this tradition are usually ecocritically analysed. But those ecocritical analyses are done largely with attention to the economic, political and social challenges posed by the activities of oil extraction as represented in texts. But rather than just follow such orientation, this study wishes to see any text that explores such environmental issue as an engaged text, committed to the environmental issue and analyse it according to the dynamics and dialectics of engagement. This study proposes to explore another dimension of commitment in Nigerian literature,...