Abstract: Any critic familiar with the art of African writers will discover its filial link with primordial art forms. While critical responses have mostly focused on the social relevance of those forms in respect of their uses to resolve postcolonial dilemmas, more interpretations are needed which contextualise ecological texts within a framework that interrogates the relationship between man and his environment. This paper is an ecocritical engagement with Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991) and Every Leaf A Hallelujah (2021). The paper gives attention to two ecological issues raised by Nigerian writers. These include the crises of oil exploration in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria and the expositions on “forest fables” which is the relationship between man and nature on the one hand and the despoliation of nature on the other hand. The article separates Ben Okri’s alignment with the tradition of presenting “forest fables” and his ingenuous use of children as heroes in his prose works. The article concludes by drawing on the novelist’s affirmation of the compactness of the African worldview. In the relationship between man and nature, the paper amplifies the perspective that nature, in the African environment, acquiesces to dignified “exploitation” for its survival and sustenance of man.
Keywords: Ben Okri, tradition, ecocriticism, forest fables, environmental consciousness
DOI: www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2025.v04i01.009
author/Afolayan, K.N. & Oladeji, F.O.
journal/Tasambo JLLC 4(1) | May 2025 |
