Abstract
This presentation surveys Sir Ben Okri’s 2023 Tiger Work through an ‘aesthetics of necessity’ prism as deduced not only from its dedication to “those who love the world enough to fight for it,” but also from the book’s mystical Blakean intertext, the final lines of which ponder the Tyger’s creation. I propose that the urgent apocalyptic thrust and ecocritical underpinning of this multimodal, interdisciplinary collection of essays, poems, parables, stoku [an amalgam of Japanese Haiku and flash fiction], an epistle and allegorical short stories inform Okri’s narrative stance in his treatment of environmental science and the ambiguities of reality. I adopt an eco-critical lens that studies literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary viewpoint; where all sciences come together to analyse the environment and to brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of contemporary environmental chaos, while cognizant of causal laws of science, on the one hand, and the intentionality and consciousness of art, on the other. My argument references two works of Stephen O’Leary (‘Apocalyptic Argument and the Anticipation of Catastrophe: The Prediction of Risk and the Risk of Prediction’ 1997 and Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric 1998); Arne Naess (Ecology of Wisdom 2008); and Michael Chapman (Literary Transactions in South Africa 2025).
Of necessity, too, I adopt a phenomenological ecocritical approach to critical environmental issues, such as water scarcity, climate change, global warming, deforestation, and reading for meaning that fall under the conceptual carapace of Okri’s “existential creativity” within the overriding theme of conservation. I conclude by citing lines from four of Okri’s 2021 A Fire in My Head poems− “Finding the Present,” “closed. still open” and “Notre Dame is Telling Us Something,”and climaxing with “Grenfell Tower, June 2017”− in illustration of his penetrating engagement with environmental issues and his ardent plea for change.
Biography
Dr. Rosemary Alice Gray is a BA, Senior Teachers Diploma (UCT); BA Honours, MA cum laude, Dlitt.et Phil. (Unisa). Rosemary is Emeritus Professor in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is a rated researcher, specializing in Anglo-Saxon, Middle English and Pan-African texts. Her current research interest is the work of Ben Okri, and she has written or presented over fifty papers on Okri’s oeuvre, plus a Bloomsbury Academic monograph entitled, The Tough Alchemy of Ben Okri: The writer as conceptual artist.
Like Sir Ben Okri, she had planned to become a scientist, but fate dictated that she studied languages (French, Latin, German, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English). Growing up in East Africa, she perforce added Kiswahili, and returning to South Africa, Afrikaans. She has pursued her scientific bent by marrying a scientist, a Geo-Chemist; is a Fellow of the International Eskom Exco for Young Scientists and former Board Member of EEYS and Le Mouvement International pour le loisire scientifique et technologique (MILSET), adjudicating the annual UP Dr Derek Gray Gold Medal Award and the Dr Meiring Naude Gold Medal Award (for the Top Young Scientists).
She is Honorary Life Vice President of the English Academy of Southern Africa and Managing Editor of the English Academy Review: A Journal of English Studies.
Her book publications include Broken Strings: The Politics of Poetry and Sounding Wings: Short Stories from Africa (with Stephen Finn, Longmans), A Tribute to JRR Tolkien (Unisa Press), Light Comes Out of the Darkness: The History of Expo for Young Scientists (OUP); A Glass Half Full or Half Empty? The Challenges of Political Succession and Elections in Africa (Ssali pubs.); Commemorative Snapshots: Recalibrating Our Blue Diamond (Ssali) and Hunger for the Light: The Challenges of an African Life (Unisa Press).