Renegotiating Nature: Writing the Post-Romantic Australian City

Abstract

Nature writers of the Romantic movement responded to the exploitation of natural resources and loss of untamed nature in an age of technological innovation. This legacy of Romanticism pervades contemporary writings about nature and place. However, ideas advanced through Romantic writings of ‘nature as a redemptive force’ and the ideological separation of nature and culture remain problematic (Adam 1998). If one does not consider this legacy and question inherited conventions, myths about nature are likely to be reinforced. In this paper, I explore some of Romanticism’s legacies for nature writing and how contemporary writers draw on and resist the established conventions. I argue that Australian cities provide sites of resistance, where assumptions of Romanticism might be addressed by writers. Cities are places not traditionally associated with nature writing and places where nature/culture relationships might be re-imagined, complicating notions of place, nature and the urban to arrive at new post-Romantic ways of writing nature.