In recent years, Australian literature has experienced a revival of interest both domestically and internationally. The increasing prominence of work by writers like Christos Tsiolkas, heightened through television and film adaptation, as well as the award of major international prizes to writers like Richard Flanagan, and the development of new, high-profile prizes like the Stella Prize, have all reinvigorated interest in Australian literature both at home and abroad. This Companion emerges as a part of that reinvigoration, considering anew the history and development of Australian literature and its key themes, as well as tracing the transition of the field through those critical debates. It considers works of Australian literature on their own terms, as well as positioning them in their critical and historical context and their ethical and interactive position in the public and private spheres. With an emphasis on literature’s responsibilities, this book claims Australian literary studies as a field uniquely positioned to expose the ways in which literature engages with, produces and is produced by its context, provoking a critical re-evaluation of the concept of the relationship between national literatures, cultures, and histories, and the social function of literary texts.
Author(s): Jessica Gildersleeve
Series: (Routledge Literature Companions)
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 470
Tags: Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Postcolonialism, Australian Literature
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Australian Literature, Companionship, and Viral Responsibility
Section A: Literature in the Colony
1 Expressing a New Civilisation: Authorship, Publishing, and Reading in the 1890s
2 The Redemption of the Larrikin at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
3 The Metropolis or the Bush?
4 The Weeping Kangaroo
Section B: Early Twentieth-Century Australia
5 The Reflective Moment: Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century Australia
6 Among the Autumn Authors: Books and Writers in Interwar Australian Magazines
7 ‘Caterpillars of the Commonwealth’: Dangerous Books in Australia
8 ‘Mad, Muddy, Mess of Eels’: Modern Theatre and Patrick White’s Sensuous Dramaturgy
Section C: Contemporary Australia
9 ‘Are You With Me?’ Offensiveness and Australian Drama in the 1970s
10 Around 1988: Australian Literature, History, and the Bicentenary
11 Politics and Contemporary Australian Fiction
12 Towards a New Direction in Contemporary Criticism: Cognitive Australian Literary Studies
Section D: Australian Literary Studies in the Public Sphere
13 Literary Criticism in Australia
14 Obstetric Realism and Sacred Cows: Women Writers and Book Reviewing in Australia
15 Literary Prizes and the Public Sphere
16 Literary Media Entertainment: Author Stardom and the Public (Media) Sphere
17 Australian Literature in the University
18 An Australian Ethics of Reading?
Section E: Australian Literature and the World
19 News from Australia: Global Modernism Studies and the Case of Australian Modernism
20 Hijabi-Bodies and Sartorial Strategies
21 Australian Literature in Asia: China and India
22 Facing East: Asia in Australian Literature
Section F: Key Themes in Australian Writing
23 Turning the Inside Out: Interiority and Australian Fiction
24 Gendering Australian Literature
25 ‘Silence Is My Habitat’: Judith Wright, Writing, and Deafness
26 Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Australian Literature
27 Into the Urban Labyrinth: Helen Garner and the Drug Narrative
28 ‘Something New at Hand’: Australian Literature and the Sacred
29 Animal Presence: Problems and Potential in Recent Australian Fiction
30 Landscape (After Mabo)
31 ‘The Extraordinary Behind the Ordinary’: A Brief History of Australian Suburban Literature
32 Australian Literature and Everyday Life
33 Emblematic Spaces: Postcoloniality and the Region
Section G: Genre in Australian Literary Studies
34 Twenty-First-Century Australian Poetry
35 Life Writing and Conflict: Love Wins
36 Reluctant Wandering: New Mobilities in Contemporary Australian Travel Writing
37 Australia’s Long Relationship with Romance
38 Magical Migrations: Australian Fairy Tale Traditions and Practices
39 Shadows in Paradise: Australian Gothic
40 Australian Television and Literary Criticism
41 Screen Adaptation and Australian Literature
Index
