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Tom Lynch (International) assertion Tom Lynch i(A111111 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Strange Lands: The Lexicon of Settler-Colonial Landscapes in Charles Fletcher Lummis's and Arthur Groom's Portrayals of the American West and the Australian Outback (International) assertion Tom Lynch , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , vol. 22 no. 4 2015; (p. 697-716)
1 Ecopastoralism : Settler Colonial Pastoral Imaginary in the US West and Australian Outback Tom Lynch , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 30 June vol. 30 no. 2 2015;

'As Lawrence Buell has observed, the pastoral, which in the ‘old’ worlds of Europe was a type of symbolic allegory not expected to be taken literally, became in Europe’s ‘new’ worlds of settler colonialism, such as the United States and Australia, ‘a vehicle of national self-definition’ as well as a template for the construction of an idyllic settler colonial pastoral way of life (52). The settler colony was often envisioned as a type of Arcadia. Martin Mulligan and Stuart Hill argue that the earliest European settlers in Australia, for example, ‘were bent on carving out familiar farms in unfamiliar settings; radically transforming landscapes into approximations of the Arcadian visions they had in their minds’ eyes’ (21). Similarly, in the United States Thomas Jefferson ‘saw America as a paradise of small farms, a rural arcadia with every freeholder secure under his own vine and fig tree’ (Schlesinger 221). Thus we note how, manifest in various settlement and homesteading schemes in both the United States and Australia, the allegorical discourse of the European pastoral mode became ideological and materially manifest. The purported discovery of new lands as yet untainted by the urban and court vices that the pastoral mode critiqued, and that Enlightenment-era political philosophers hoped to supersede, provided an opportunity for Europeans to fashion the discourse of Arcadian fantasy into a material reality that would influence the lives of millions of people and alter the ecology of millions of acres of land up to the present day. In its afterlife the pastoral would seem to be surprisingly vital.

'This essay examines how the pastoral imaginary functioned in settler colonial societies, the ecological consequences of this role, and a possible bioregionally informed alternative that seeks to develop a more sustainable and just version of that imaginary. By doing so I hope to show how the ancient pastoral mode, even and perhaps especially in settler colonial circumstances, inspires new forms of not just literary but also literal pastoralism and how, in Buell’s phrase, we might envision an ‘ecocentric repossession of pastoral’ (52).'

Source: Abstract.

1 “Nothing but land” : Women’s Narratives, Gardens, and the Settler-Colonial Imaginary in the US West and Australian Outback (International) assertion Tom Lynch , 2014 single work essay
— Appears in: Western American Literature , vol. 48 no. 4 2014; (p. 374-399)

— Review of The Road from Coorain Jill Ker Conway , 1989 single work autobiography ; No Roads Go By Myrtle Rose White , 1932 single work autobiography ; Beyond the Western Rivers Myrtle Rose White , 1955 single work autobiography

'This essay applies ecocriticism, informed by a transnational, settler-colonial theory, to a comparative analysis of texts by three US and three Australian women authors. Through an examination of both “wild” and domestic landscapes, the essay works to establish how these authors manifest the “settler-colonial imaginary” through their glorification of the process of establishing English-style gardens on homesteads founded in territory depicted as an “unland.” The essay reads the insistent use of a “nothing but” construction in descriptions of uncultivated land in both the Australian and US texts as signifying the literary imagining of the “unland” of the colonized territory, a discursive clearing of the land, as it were, to make room for settlement. From there, it proceeds to compare and contrast the different ways in which these texts imagined settlers’ occupation of land as an ecological struggle to wrest an arid or semi-arid landscape into a space amenable for the production of an English garden—the symbol of the settler-colonial project’s ultimate success. It then discusses texts by settler women in both Australia and the United States that imagine settlement in a more ecologically sustainable way, signaling a potential “counter-colonial” gesture of reconciliation with place.' [publisher's summary]

1 y separately published work icon The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place, Tom Lynch (editor), Cheryll Glotfelty (editor), Karla Armbruster (editor), Athens : University of Georgia Press , 2012 Z1872133 2012 anthology criticism 'The twenty-four original essays here are written by an outstanding selection of international scholars. The range of bioregions covered is global and includes such diverse places as British Columbia’s Meldrum Creek and Italy’s Po River Valley, the Arctic and the Outback. There are even forays into cyberspace and outer space. In their comprehensive introduction, the editors map the terrain of the bioregional movement, including its history and potential to inspire and invigorate place-based and environmental literary criticism. Responding to bioregional tenets, this volume is divided into four sections. The essays in the “Reinhabiting” section narrate experiments in living-in-place and restoring damaged environments. The “Rereading” essays practice bioregional literary criticism, both by examining texts with strong ties to bioregional paradigms and by opening other, less-obvious texts to bioregional analysis. In “Reimagining,” the essays push bioregionalism to evolve—by expanding its corpus of texts, coupling its perspectives with other approaches, or challenging its core constructs. Essays in the “Renewal” section address bioregional pedagogy, beginning with local habitat studies and concluding with musings about the Internet. In response to the environmental crisis, we must reimagine our relationship to the places we inhabit. This volume shows how literature and literary studies are fundamental tools to such a reimagining' (Publisher websire).
1 Literature in the Arid Zone Tom Lynch , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Littoral Zone : Australian Contexts and Their Writers 2007; (p. 70-92)
This chapter surveys and assesses from an ecocentric perspective some representative literary portrayals of the Australian deserts. Generally, it contrasts works that portray the desert as an alien, hostile, and undifferentiated void with works that recognise and value the biological particularities of specific desert places. It explores the literature of three dominant cultural orientations to the deserts: pastoralism, mining, and traversal. It concludes with a consideration of several multi-voiced and/or multi-genred bioregionally informed works that suggests fruitful directions for more ecocentric literary approaches. (abstract taken from The Littoral Zone)
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