Settler ghosts, settler storytelling: Jamie Ashworth, ‘”The ghosts of bygone ages rude”: Ecology, Religion, and the Gothic in the New Zealand Settler Fable, 1845-1878’, AJVS, 29, 2, 2025, pp. 56-72 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler ghosts, settler storytelling: Jamie Ashworth, ‘”The ghosts of bygone ages rude”: Ecology, Religion, and the Gothic in the New Zealand Settler Fable, 1845-1878’, AJVS, 29, 2, 2025, pp. 56-72

27Nov25

Excerpt: In mid-nineteenth century Aotearoa New Zealand, settler-colonial literary encounters with the Indigenous ecologies of the archipelago only served to reinforce this Gothic “mechanism of repression and haunting” (Kavka 59). For instance, in 1888, settlerpoet Douglas Sladen described his view on “the oppressiveness of the forest,” concluding that “the forest means ennui – and a prison” (28). To Sladen, the “very depth” of the colonial environment was a near-personified entity embodying both “hidden beauty” and “cruel” wilderness (Sladen 28), a perfect setting for the construction of “literary animals” (Blackham 33).

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