AustLit

‘The basic contention inspiring this paper is: poets care about Australia’s physical environment and human survival in Australia. Australian literature contains a substantial body of knowledge that could be deployed to constitute the imaginative core of an environmental ethic. Thus a great many Australian literary texts could be studied with the purpose of helping to usher in the desirable concept of an environmentally literate community. The essay is divided into two sections. Section one will provide a brief survey of environmental ethics. This survey is followed by the exposition of six deontic or prescriptive outlines, to be supplemented by some eudaemonic considerations. The latter envisage the notion of the ‘good life,’ in harmony with nature. In section two, important insights furnished by environmental ethics will be used as an orientation towards identifying the environmental concerns shown in a variety of Australian nature poems. Among the authors considered are Bruce Dawe, Dorothy Hewett, John Kinsella, Mark O’Connor, John Shaw Neilson, Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker), and last but not least Judith Wright. As will be seen, there are many convergences and correspondences between the basic claims made by environmental ethics, and the environmental insights and experiences that have been accumulated in a noteworthy corpus of Australian nature poems. What is enshrined in these poems is the ‘collective prudence,’ not only of a cultural elite, but also of the modern Everyman.’ (Author’s abstract p.81)