Myths of Wilderness in Contemporary Narratives: Environmental Postcolonialism in Australia and Canada

Abstract

Kylie Crane ends her first book with a telling anecdote when she recalls being asked by her undergraduate professor how she imagined nature. As an Australian, Crane was struck by the dissonance between her answer—“ideas of threat and survival” and “imaginings of vast, unexplored spaces, devoid of human traces”—and those of the rest of her German classmates, who spoke of “recuperation, regeneration, of regularly returning, and pleasant seasons” (181–82). Crane realized that her response was informed by Australian ideas of wilderness that did not translate into German settings, and she became fascinated with the cultural nuances of imaginations of wilderness and their origins. Her book is an extension of these early questions, and its comparison of Australian and Canadian narratives insightfully extends conversations about wilderness and the ethical and political implications of its representation. As she states, “how we talk about something affects how we think about that thing” (183).