AustLit

'This essay argues that animal-human compassion, defined as human fellow-feeling with (and not for) animals, is most urgently articulated at points of crisis in human history, such as the terrible bushfires and drought of the Australian summer of 2019–20. Literary history, particularly of pastoral literature, reveals animal-human compassion as a long-contested structure of feeling. The pastoral template established in classical literature, and refined in early modern literature, sets conventions for proper human-animal emotional relations. These ideals are radically destabilised in Andrew Marvell’s ‘dark pastoral’ civil war poetry. This troubled legacy flows through Australian settler-colonial writing about animals, particularly the kangaroo; Barron Field, Charles Harpur and Ethel Pedley strive to intervene in the patriotic myth-making associated with colonial settlement and Federation.' (Publication abstract)

'The concept of compassion, defined as suffering with, has a long history often entangled in that of the cognate term pity. It has proven to be a changeable concept that is not only responsive to but integral to historical change itself. This is because it is a sociable emotion, but, in the sense that it expresses a desire to alleviate the suffering of another, the emotion also expresses the desire to effect change. For this reason it is a particularly timely lens through which to consider the emotional effect of climate change upon local communities, and the new emotional regime taking shape in the Anthropocene – and the dawning of the Pyrocene – beginning with Armidale, New South Wales through the drought and fire of Australia’s Black Summer of 2019–20, but extending beyond.' (Publication abstract)