The pristine past, the plundered present
Nature as lost home in Tanure Ojaide’s poetry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9002235 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sule Emmanuel Egya (0000-0003-1888-1822, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 186-200 |
| Publication date | 2018-07-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0021989418777852 |
| OpenAlex | W2853665184 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 11 |
Tanure Ojaide is a major voice of post-war Nigerian poetry in English, distinguished by his recourse to the orature of his birthplace. Ojaide takes orature as a locus of an aesthetics that is cognizant of the arts and politics of rural people, especially in the face of a modernity-driven, viperous establishment. His poetry’s dependence on orality, I argue, implies its rootedness in nature. But far more crucial to this article is the contention that nature in Ojaide’s poetry is not merely evoked as an aesthetic strategy — an embellishment of what many have regarded as an overwhelming political theme in his poetry. Nature (the natural environment, biodiversity, flora and fauna) is also thematized as home — now a lost home in the face of modernity and petrodollar global capitalism. In the context of postcolonial ecocriticism, I attempt a reading of his poetry to point out that the nature (environment) of the Niger Delta region where the poet hails from is, just like the people inhabiting it, a victim of exploitation and oppression caused by large-scale oil exploration in the region; and it is no longer the pristine home it used to be
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Context (archaeology · Ecocriticism · Literacy · Literature · Modernity · Oppression · Orality · Poetics · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · History · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
Indigenous consciousness and life interconnections
Uma análise comparativa do tema da perda da pátria na poesia lírica de Babur e poetas contemporâneos
A Comparative Analysis of the Theme of Homeland Loss in the Lyric Poetry of Babur and Contemporary Poets
Tanure Ojaide on the poet
West Africa
Ecofeminist belonging and indigenous festivals
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Poisoned Wells
The place of Urhobo folklore in Tanure Ojaide’s poetry
Introduction
The Cumulative Neglect of Collective Responsibility
Aesthetic Metamorphosis Oral Rhetoric in the Poetry of Tanure Ojaide
The Critical Reception of Modern African Poetry
Poetics of cartography
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |