“A Sort of Arcadian Country”: Plant-Life in Some Early South African Travelogues

Abstract

Various branches of current ecocriticism are exploring ways of dismantling or at least diminishing dominant anthropocentric ways of evaluating the  relationships among humans, the non-human world, and the literary imagination. Critical Animal Studies, Critical Plant Studies, and multispecies ecocriticism endeavour to re-evaluate the roles, even agency, of non-human life, as represented in literary works. This article unpacks the depiction of plants in three early South African travelogues (1795–1836), illuminating the sources of some enduring assumptions and iconic imageries in our relations  with the natural world.