ادبیات اکولوژیک: سبز کردن دوبارهٔ چشم‌اندازهای آفریقایی

Eco-Critical Literature: Regreening African Landscapescritically examines the representations, constructions, and imaginings of the relationship between the human and non-human worlds in contemporary African literature and culture. It offers innovative, incisive, and critical perspectives on the importance of sustaining a symbiotic relationship between humans and their environment. The book thus carries African scholarship beyond the mere analysis of themes and style to ethical and activist roles of literature having an impact on readers and the public. It is a scholarship geared towards rectifying ecological imbalance that is prevalent in many parts of the continent that forms the setting, context, and thematic discourse of the works or authors studied in this book. Besides sensitizing the African readership to the need for the restoration of harmony between man and the environment, this book equally aims to further familiarize scholars and students working on African literature and culture with the theoretical concerns of eco-criticism. Cover 1 Title page 2 Copyright page 3 Contents 4 Foreword 6 Introduction: African Cultural Art Forms, Eco-activism, and (Eco)-logical Consciousness 10 1. Representations of the Effects of Colonial Land Policies in two Zimbabwean Novels 20 2. Landscaping as a Plot and Character Development Medium in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow 34 3. Eco-activism in Contemporary African Literature: Zakes Mda’s Heart of Redness and Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist 49 4. Isidore Okpewho’s Tides and Ken Saro-Wiwa’s A Month and a Day: A Kinesis of Eco-activism from Theory to Praxis 65 5. Nature and Environment in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God 92 6. Degraded Environment and Destabilized Women in Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow 112 7. The Niger Delta, Environment, Women and the Politics of Survival in Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow 126 8. Women as Victims, Environmentalists and Eco-activists in Vincent Egbuson’s Love My Planet 140 9. Can the Earth Be Belted? Rethinking Eco-literacy and Ecological Justice in Wangari Maathai’s 156 10. Nature and Social Responsibility in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Tanure Ojaide’s The Tale of the Harmattan: Cross-Border Studies in Social Responsibility 178 11. Poetic Rites, Minority Rights, and the Politics of Otherness in Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs 192 12. Transcending the Discontents of Global Capitalism: Toward the Dialectics of De-commodified Environment in Daydream of Ants and Other Poems and The Eye of the Earth 207 13. Poetics of Environmental Agitation: A Stylistic Reading of Hope Eghagha’s Rhythms of the Last Testament and The Governor’s Lodge and Other Poems 230 14. Niger Delta Dystopia and Environmental Despoliation in Tanure Ojaide’s Poetry 253 15. Eco-survival in the Poetry of G. ‘Ebinyo Ogbowei 272 16. Poetics of Environmental Degradation in Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues 285 17. For Common Corn: Eco-ing Bole Butake’s Concerns in Lake God, The Survivors, and And Palm-Wine Will Flow 314 18. Destabilizing the Images of the African Forest As a Conceptual Space for Renegotiating African Identities during the Zimbabwe Armed Liberation Struggle in the Film Flame (1996) 330 Notes on Editor and Contributors 347 Index 352 Back cover 363 This book critically examines the representations, constructions, and imaginings of the relationship between the human and non-human worlds in contemporary African literature and culture. It offers incisive and critical perspectives on the importance of sustaining a symbiotic relationship between humans and their environment. The book thus carries African scholarship beyond the mere analysis of themes and style to ethical and activist roles of literature having an impact on readers and on the public. It is a scholarship geared towards rectifying ecological imbalance that is prevalent in many parts of the continent that forms the setting, context, and thematic discourse of the works or authors studied in this book. Besides sensitizing the African readership to the need for the restoration of harmony between man and the environment, this book equally aims to further familiarize scholars and students working on African literature and culture with the theoretical concerns of eco-criticism