Whales in Contemporary Anglophone Literature and Film: A Cetopoetic Reading of Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider

That whales are integral to "The Whale Rider"'s plot is readily apparent from the novel's title.But how is one to read these whales, and what is their significance to this literary text?In this essay, I approach Witi Ihimaera's 1987 novel "The Whale Rider" from the perspective of cultural and literary animal studies.After a brief theoretical discussion, I situate the novel in the context of other contemporary anglophone literature and film in which whales are prominently featured.I then analyse what I call "The Whale Rider"'s cetopoetic elements and argue that it is through these elements that the novel performs Māori cosmology.