Green Writing and Elemental Poetic: A Postcolonial Ecocritical Reading of Tim Winton

Abstract

This article will draw a connection between postcolonial green writing and Winton’s poetic natural space, where the material world and imagination coexist, and emphasize the unity between elemental essence and the essence of the everyday lifeworld, through examining the manifestation of the four perennial elements in the works of Tim Winton. It finds that Winton’s works explore the depiction of four crucial elementary matters in his works, as well as a discourse initiated regarding the potential of literature to foster ecological awareness. Referring to postcolonial ecocriticism and Bachelard’s elemental poetics, it argues that Winton’s writing is in line with these two theories and aims to read Tim Winton’s works as a carrier of environmental concern and demonstrate an effort to save the worsening planet.