Unlocking the fountains of the heart'-settler verse and the politics of sympathy

Nineteenth-century settler verse about indigenous peoples has received relatively little critical analysis; what there is has sometimes been negative, judging it as complicit in the evils of colonization. This essay sets out to show that settler poets were capable of producing powerful poems designed to enlist reader sympathy for the sufferings of indigenous peoples, as a prelude to political action aimed at ameliorating their condition. The essay considers three ‘crying mother’ poems from the 1830s, locating them in their period's contentious, highly-charged debates about race, morality and national destiny

Art · Indigenous · Literature · Morality · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Sympathy · Gender Studies · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology