ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to present a view of nature that, on the one hand, complicates the divide between the realist and the culturalist views of nature and, on the other, to show how nature, since precolonial Nigeria, is extra-human in the sense that it is beyond human comprehension and control. Human communality with nature, in this premise, implies humans’ submissiveness to the natural world and a constant yearning, through belief systems, to measure up to nature, to be worthy of sharing in nature’s ontological forces and agencies. The poetry of Niyi Osundare and Christian Otobotekere will be read to demonstrate the bond between individuals and their birthplace nature, something of personal romanticism, non-spiritualised and yet deeply binding. Water as nature is central to the thematic design of the novel. By centralising water, Elechi Amadi calls attention to its overriding significance as a being of nature to human society, at least in his ethnic nation, in Nigeria, and in Africa.
