Greening the Arts: Arnold Udoka’s Inyene and the connections between drama and human ecology

Abstract

The Earth is in peril. Climate change, plagues, conflicts, environmental degradation and drought now stares the human race in the face. Over the years, changes in climatic conditions have intensified a neardesperate quest to salvage the remnant of humanity from the nowexistent eco-crisis. This paper investigates the relevance of literary drama to the eco-challenges of sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of this study is to x-ray the thematic importance of Arnold Udoka’s Inyene in the discourse of ecology and the environmental crisis now confronting Nigeria. The paper finds this dramatic text as one of such literary discourses that interface with a scientific phenomenon such as ecology. It thus recommends that the subject of ecology and the crisis of the environment needs to be re-evaluated to embrace the contributions of the arts, especially drama.