The poetics of naming in colonial Romanticism

Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796–1880) and Charles Harpur (1813–1867) were two of the most important Romantic poets of colonial New South Wales. In this article, I consider their engagement with Indigenous Australian languages. In “Native Song” (1848), Dunlop provides a transcription and translation of verse composed by her informant Wulatji (fl. 1840s), a local poet. In The Kangaroo Hunt (c. 1844), Harpur enriches his description of Australian landscapes with a dozen words learned from Darkinyung, Gamilaraay, Wonnarua, and Wiradjuri informants. I contrast Dunlop’s universalist approach to Indigenous language with Harpur’s particularist approach and contextualize their poetry in British philosophy of language. Dunlop and Harpur use Indigenous names to present Australia as a land steeped in poetry. This recognition of Indigenous names introduces contradictions into their poetry, which readers today can use to deconstruct the colonial poetics of naming.