5/18/2023 0 Comments Carpentaria by Alexis WrightIn this essay I argue that by drawing attention to the interweaving of language and experience and by dramatising the relationship between organism and environment, ‘ecopoetic encounters’ allows readers to rediscover major episodes of Australian environmental history. In The Swan Book, the character of Bella Donna seeks refuge in the nostalgia of swan stories after the disappearance of her native lands due to climate change her first encounter with Australia is characterised by slow violence and results in a profusion of stories. In Carpentaria, the Stranger-figure of Elias Smith is left amnesic after surviving a shipwreck during a cyclone his first encounter with Australia is extremely violent and results in a loss of personal (hi)story. In this narrative system, the discovery of Australia is not realised by exploring colonisers, but by vulnerable strangers who apprehend the continent both experientially and linguistically. 54-67 ) Abstract 'In Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013), Alexis Wright establishes an allegorical mode where she reimagines Europeans' first encounters with Australia from an Aboriginal environmental perspective. Ecopoetic Encounters : Amnesia and Nostalgia in Alexis Wright's Environmental Fiction Arnaud Barras,Īustralasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology ,ĥ 2015 (p.
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