| dc.description.abstract | The issue of climate change has recently elicited intense debate in both national and
international forums. In this regard, many current literary works are focusing on
environmental degradation, its effect, and the call for environmental conservation. This
study investigated how environmental motifs are portrayed in the selected Kiswahili
plays by Said Ahmed Mohamed and Timothy Arege. Literature is an important tool to
educate and enlighten the wider public about their problems. Based on this, the
emphasis was put on how Said Ahmed Mohamed and Timothy Arege in their selected
Kiswahili plays focused on the environmental degradation, its effects and ways of
conserving the environment. The specific objectives for the study were; to investigate
how the environmental motifs have been portrayed in the selected Kiswahili plays,
discuss how the stylistic devices have been used to portray environmental motifs and
to evaluate the place of environmental motifs in environmental conservation as
portrayed by writers of selected Kiswahili plays. The study was guided by Ecocriticism
theory that was founded by Glotferty (1996), which analysis the literary works by
examining the relationship and the interdependence between human beings and the
physical environment. The research was carried out in the library where the selected
Kiswahili plays were read. The researcher purposively selected two plays by Said
Ahmed Mohamed and two plays by Timothy Arege for the study. Data was collected
through close-textual reading of the selected texts focusing on different environmental
motifs as portrayed by writers of the selected texts. Data analysis was done in
descriptive prose based on the tenets of ecocriticism theory and categorized in reference
to the three objectives guiding the study. The research findings indicated that the
selected Kiswahili plays that were analyzed focused on various environmental issues
such as environmental degradation and its impacts as well as indicating ways in which
the environment can be conserved. This study is expected to be useful to literature
scholars and critics by bringing to light the issue of environmental motifs in the context
of ecocriticism theory. It also adds to the existing knowledge on environmental
literature as well as benefiting environmental stakeholders and environmentalists in
Africa and the world at large. | en_US |
