Animal-Human Compassion: Structures of Feeling in Dark Pastoral

Abstract

This essay argues that animal–human compassion, defined as human fellow-feeling <i>with</i> (and not <i>for</i>) 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.