The Interpretation Of Wole Soyinka’s Plays In The Perspective Of Postcolonial Ecocriticism

In 1986, Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and became the first winner to receive such an honor in Africa. Since then, scholars all around the world have shown a great interest on him and his works. His writings include many fields, such as drama, poem, fiction and literary criticism and so on. Among these, he is best known for his dramas, so many scholars pay attention to them. As for the researches for plays, many scholars focus on analyzing his plays from the aspects of image, language feature and the conflict of the western and African culture. Although, some researchers explore them from the respective of postcolonism, few people try to study the ecological thinking in his plays in the context of the postcolonial. However, many ecological elements are involved in his plays, such as the land in The Swamp Dweller, ghosts in A Dance of the Forests and cycle-time in Death and the King’s Horseman, which provide possibility for us to analyze from the perspective of ecocriticism. Based on these three plays, the paper will explore Soyinka’s ecological thinking from the perspective of postcolonial ecocritism.From the perspective of the postcolonial ecocritism, it mainly studies Soyinka’s plays and ecological thinking in two aspects. On the one hand, based on the concept of land, it analyzes the swamp in The Swamp Dweller. The land is the major medium to link human and nature. Through analyzing the change of relationship between land and people after the colonial invasion, it reveals when ecological environment has destroyed, at the same time, the spiritual ecology of indigenous people will deteriorate. On the other hand, it explores Soyinka’s ecological thinking combined with the concept of speciesism. Firstly, it introduces the connation and root of the speciesism, and then carries on the concept of non-speciesism rooted world-view of Animism in African culture, particularly Yoruba tradition. Then, it analyzes the Osun, cycle-time, and the fourth stage in the three plays to confirm Soyinka’s ecological thinking. Through analyzing ecological elements in his plays and Soyinka’s ecological views, on the one it reveals that colonial expansion is the root of ecological crisis, and on the another, it will provide us a useful approach to resolve the global environment crisis by exploring the harmonious relations of nature and human and cultural root of Africa.This essay includes four chapters. The first chapter is an introduction. It illustrates briefly the present situation of the domestic and abroad analysis about Wole Soyinka, and the purpose, significance and structure of this paper. The second chapter introduces the development and some major concepts of the postcolonial ecocriticism. The third and the fourth chapters mainly discuss the land problem and Soyinka’s ecological thinking. At last, it is the conclusion of the whole content.