Lament for the Dorsets

An Eco-critical and Postcolonial Analysis

Abstract

The whole world remained intact until one part of the human community invades the other part under the name of colonization. The colonizers occupied the lands of the natives and instil their own culture, language, art, values and beliefs upon the later. Every community survived with the consciousness of their ‘self’ and the arrival of colonists transmuted the conscious ‘self’ into the ‘Other’ within their own community. The advent of the colonists distorted the native culture and reconstructs it with the culture of their own. This distortion is not confined only to culture, ideologies and beliefs, but it extends to the natural environment of the natives. The extinction rate of the flora and fauna increased with the advent of the colonists. For example, in India the colonists destroyed huge areas of forests for tea and coffee plantations. Thus Colonization includes within it an ecological imperialism. Alfred W. Crosby in his book Ecological Imperialism (2016) says that, “Europeans displacement and replacement of the native peoples in the temperate zones was more a matter of biology than of military conquest.” Thus, this research paper aims at giving voice for ‘Nature’ which has been seriously affected and marginalized by colonization through the poem, ‘Lament for the Dorsets’ written by the Canadian poet, Al Purdy.