Xue and Bate suggest that the future is bleak for mankind. It is this bleak future that Wole Soyinka dramatises in A Dance of the Forests especially in the section where the three human characters are masked and in a state of possession they speak for the future in the voices of different spirits. As Eldred Jones (1973) intimates, the spirits together symbolise the total environment of Africa - all its resources and all its potentialities.

1. Reading Ecocriticism in the play
‘A Dance of the forest’ by Wole Soyinka
Department of English, MK Bhavnagar University
Paper no.206 African Literature
Subject Code: 22413

2. I am Divya Sheta.
● MA Part II, Semester IV
● Topic : Reading Ecocriticism in the play ‘A Dance of the Forest’ by
Wole Soyinka
● Paper no.206. African Literature
● Subject Code: 22413
● Enrollment Number: 4069206420210033
● Contact Info : divyasheta@gmail.com
● Submitted to : S.B.Gardi Department of English,MK Bhavnagar
University.

3. About the Author
● Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near
Ibadan in western Nigeria.
● a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London 1958-
1959.
● awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to
study African drama
● He has been professor of comparative literature.
● He founded the theatre group, “The 1960 Masks” and in
1964, the “Orisun Theatre Company”, in which he has
produced his own plays and taken part as actor.
● The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986 : "who in a wide
cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the
drama of existence"
(The Nobel Prize in Literature)

4. Soyinka’s play, A dance in the forest, was performed
for the first time during Nigeria’s independence and
explore many issues related to independent
movement in Nigeria, relation of tradition to the
history, and Nigerian politics. In this play, Soyinka
seems to stress that it is the duty of Nigerians to get
rid of the evil out of the society. The play warns to
the people of Nigeria that if they if they do not
remain alert, history will repeat itself and people
would repeat their mistakes. (Melamu)
About the Play

5. What is Ecocriticism
“Ecocriticism” was a term coined in the late 1970s by combining “criticism”
with a shortened form of “ecology”—the science that investigates the
interrelations of all forms of plant and animal life with each other and with
their physical habitats. “Ecocriticism” (or by alternative names,
environmental criticism and green studies) designates the critical writings
that explore the relations between literature and the biological and physical
environment, conducted with an acute awareness of the damage being
wrought on that environment by human activities.
Abrams

6. Ecocritical concern in the Play
SPIRIT OF THE PALM : White skeins wove me, I,
Spirit of the Palm Now course I red. I who suckle
blackened hearts, know Heads will fall down,
Crimson in their bed !
SPIRIT OF DARKNESS : More have I seen, I, Spirit
of the Dark, Naked they breathe within me,
foretelling now How, by the dark of peat and forest
They'll be misled And the shutters of the leaves Shall
close down on the doomed And naked head.
SPIRIT OF PRECIOUS STONES : Still do I draw them,
down Into the pit that glitters, I ' Spirit of gold and
diamonds Mine is the vain light courting death A-ah ! Blight
this eye that threaded Rocks with light, earth with golden
lodes Traitor to the guardian tribe, tum Tum to lead !
Soyinka

7. Ecocritical concern in the Play
SPIRIT OF THE PACHYDERMS : Blood that rules
the sunset, bathe This, our ivory red Broken is the
sleep of giants Wanton raiders, ivory has a point
Thus, thus we bled.
SPIRIT OF THE RIVERS: from Limpopo to the Nile
coils but one snake On mud banks, and sandy bed I
who mock the deserts, shed a tear Of pity to form
palm-ringed oases Stain my bowels red !
SPIRIT OF THE SUN: Red is the pit of the sun's entrails, and I Who light the
crannies of the bole Would speak, but shadows veil the eye That pierces with the
thorn. I know the stole That warms the shoulders of the moon. But this is not its
shadow. And I trace No course that leaves a cloud. The Sun cries Noon Whose
hand is it that covers up his face !
SPIRIT OF VOLCANOES: Nipples I engender, scattered of
the Forests Through the broad breast of the earth, I, Spirit of
erupting mountains But I am not now winded. I have not
belched These twenty hours or more. I have spat No hot ashes
in the air.
Soyinka

8. Ecocritical concern in the Play
Xue and Bate suggest that the future is bleak for mankind. It
is this bleak future that Wole Soyinka dramatises in A Dance
of the Forests especially in the section where the three human
characters are masked and in a state of possession they speak
for the future in the voices of different spirits. As Eldred
Jones (1973) intimates, the spirits together symbolise the
total environment of Africa - all its resources and all its
potentialities.

9. Work Cited
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 11th ed., Cengage Learning, 2014.
Fai, Gilbert Tarka. “Theatre and Environmental Protection: An Ecocritical Study of the Selected Plays of Wole Soyinka.” Global Journal of Human Social
Science, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 95-99, https://globaljournals.org/GJHSS_Volume10/12-Theatre-and-Environmental-Protection-An-Ecocritical-Study-of-the-
Selected-Plays-of-Wole-Soyinka.pdf. Accessed 10 March 2023.
Jones, Eldred. The Writing of Wole Soyinka. London: Heinemann, 1973.
Melamu, Moteane John. “Demoke's Totem: The Role of the Artist in Soyinka's A Dance of the Forest.” Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2001. ajol.info,
https://www.ajol.info/index.php/jcs/article/view/6224. Accessed 10 March 2023.
Soyinka, Wole. A Dance of the Forests. Oxford University Press, 1963.
Sun, Xue and Xiangwu Meng. ‗The Ascendant Green Literary Study of Ecocriticism‘ Sino-US English Teaching, Vol.3, No 3 (serial no.27), 2006, pp 68-71.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1986. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Fri. 10 Mar 2023.
<https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/summary/>