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y separately published work icon JASAL periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Issue Details: First known date: 2021... vol. 21 no. 1 2021 of JASAL est. 2002 JASAL
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The first issue of JASAL for 2021 forges a number of valuable critical pathways into some of the under-researched spaces of the broad field of Australian literary studies. This issue also offers a strong collection of reviews of recently published essay collections, critical studies and poetry.' (Ellen Smith, Joesph Cummins, Introduction)

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2021 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
‘Waltzing St. Kilda’ : Writing in Polish in Australia, Mary Besemeres , Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams , single work criticism

'This article is an overview of literature in Polish produced in Australia. As Michael Jacklin has argued (2009), LOTE (Languages Other Than English) writing in Australia ‘has yet to be recognised’. Multilingual writing constitutes a hidden history within Australian literary studies. Polish-language writing is one such hidden history. The two largest waves of emigration from Poland to Australia took place in the decade after the Second World War (ca. 1947-1956), and in the 1980s and 1990s, in the wake of the martial law imposed by General Jaruzelski in 1981 to suppress the opposition movement, Solidarity (Kujawa 142). Our primary focus in this article is the literature in Polish created by authors who came to Australia as part of these two waves. We also discuss the work of Liliana Rydzyńska, who arrived in Australia in 1969, i.e. between the two waves. We then offer a brief survey of more recent Australian writing in Polish, from 2000 till the present. We close with reference to work produced in English by Australian authors of Polish-speaking heritage. Our research on Polish-language writing in Australia traces an evolution from post-WWII writing, on the one hand dominated by traumatic memories of war and experiences of alienation, on the other characterized by exuberant satirical impulses, to post-Solidarity-era writing, largely reflective of a closer engagement with Australian landscapes and culture, and often, a sense of cosmopolitan and transnational identity.' (Publication abstract)

Christos Tsiolkas's Style, Mark Azzopardi , single work criticism

'This article takes up a specific feature of Christos Tsiolkas's writing, his style. Focusing on Tsiolkas's fourth novel, The Slap, this article argues that Tsiolkas’s style is an inarticulate style: a style that does not always use the right word at the right moment, that employs language for narrative utility rather than its own sake, and that sporadically departs from standard usage and correctness in ways that do not appear artistically motivated. My argument is that The Slap is notable among contemporary fiction in that what I consider to be Tsiolkas’s worst sentences are the most revealing of his inclinations as a novelist. Consequently, I depart from what has become a standard formula in Tsiolkas's reception, that where Tsiolkas succeeds as a writer he succeeds in spite of his style. Finally, this article also contributes to recent debates about the purpose and vocabulary of Australian literary discussion: how critics debate the work of a prize-winning author, how criticism and praise operate in critical judgements, and the significance of style in evaluations of literature.' (Publication abstract)

‘Outside the Circle of One’s Own Experience’ : George Orwell, Kylie Tennant and the Politics of Poverty during the Yellow Book Period, Ella Mudie , single work criticism

'Never directly associated with nor influenced by one another, the British author George Orwell and the Australian novelist Kylie Tennant are nonetheless two contemporaneous writers for whom the issue of poverty proved an enduring preoccupation in both work and life. Both sought lived experience of Depression era hardship that was, in turn, translated into ambiguous works of fiction and non-fiction. During a formative period in both writers’ careers, Orwell and Tennant were published in England by the influential and progressive left-wing house of Victor Gollancz. This essay examines the representation of poverty in Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), the latter of which was distributed through Gollancz’s Left Book Club during the peak of the ‘Yellow Book’ period, and in Tennant’s fictional portrait of inner-city working-class life, Foveaux (1939), through the lens of their association with Gollancz.  It argues that the urgent moral imperative to solve the global crisis of poverty represents an important basis for understanding the turn to documentary realism by Orwell and Tennant at that time. While publication by Gollancz helped to establish international reputations for Orwell and Tennant as writers of social conscience, this essay also considers the extent to which the growing scrutiny afforded to the participant-observer mode complicates their contemporary reception.'  (Publication abstract)

The Genesis of Thea Astley's Multiple Effects of Rainshadow, Cheryl M. Taylor , single work criticism

'A work of traditional scholarship rather than of literary criticism, this essay discusses the Thea Astley novel that relies most heavily on sources, including black and white histories, biographies, language dictionaries, and news reports. It demonstrates the obscurity and diversity of the sources on which Astley drew, and the creativity of her responses to their political, religious and racial assumptions. It seeks to understand something of Astley's creative processes, and to define their limits.'  (Publication abstract)

Donna Lee Brien and Quinn Eades, Ed. Offshoot : Contemporary Life Writing Methodologies and Practice, Anne Pender , single work review
— Review of Offshoot : Contemporary Life Writing Methodologies and Practice 2018 anthology criticism poetry prose ;
'Life writing is one of the most popular forms of literature at present. Works of autobiography, memoir and biography, particularly of and by well-known figures, are huge sellers and attract significant scholarly interest. Yet the analysis of these forms in the academy is weighted towards autobiography and memoir. This book continues that trend away from an interest in biography, although it does include several essays on the form.' (Introduction)
Anthony Uhlmann, Ed., Gerald Murnane: Another World in This One, Joseph Steinberg , single work review
— Review of Gerald Murnane : Another World in This One 2020 anthology criticism ;
Victoria Kuttainen, Susann Leibich and Sarah Galletly, Eds., The Transported Imagination : Australian Interwar Magazines and the Geographical Imaginaries of Colonial Modernity, Megan Mooney Taylor , single work review
— Review of The Transported Imagination : Australian Interwar Magazines and the Geographical Imaginaries of Colonial Modernity Victoria Kuttainen , Susann Liebich , Sarah Galletly , 2018 multi chapter work criticism ;
'The Transported Imagination: Australian Interwar Magazines and the Geographical Imaginaries of Colonial Modernity is a timely and significant addition to the field of periodical studies in Australia, which has seen an increasing amount of academic focus in recent years. The innovative and instructive uses of Trove, as well as a deepening understanding of the role periodicals played in the development of Australian literary culture and production, has led to the burgeoning of periodical study in both quantitative and qualitative directions. The Transported Imagination builds on the groundbreaking work of such researchers as David Carter, Robert Dixon and Roger Osborne as well as the work on island spatiality of Elizabeth McMahon and engages in a qualitative, focused deep-dive on three interwar periodicals, The BP Magazine, The Home and MAN.' 

 (Publication abstract)

Robyn Rowland. Mosaics from the Map and Under a Saffron Sun, Rose Lucas , single work review
— Review of Mosaics from the Map Robyn Rowland , 2018 selected work poetry ; Under This Saffron Sun /Safran Güneşin Altında Robyn Rowland , Mehmet Ali Celikel (translator), 2019 selected work poetry ;
'The past leaves its traces, like granular wavy lines across the sand. However, as prolific Australian–Irish poet Robyn Rowland’s recent work suggests, poetry has the capacity to rearrange these fragments of personal and collective history into an art of the extant, challenging the reader with a vibrant and collaged view of lives lived, of places loved and left and struggled for.' (Introduction)
Antonella Riem, A Gesture of Reconciliation : Partnership Studies in Australian Literature, Susan Lever , single work review
— Review of A Gesture of Reconciliation : Partnership Studies in Australian Literature Antonella Riem Natale , 2017 multi chapter work criticism ;
'Antonella Riem is a professor of English Literature at the University of Udine, in the north-east of Italy close to its borders with Austria and Slovenia. She is an internationalist, interested in Anglophone literatures across the world, and the founder of the Partnership Studies Group at the University, an international network dedicated to promoting a more equitable and caring approach to human relations (partnership) in opposition to a hierarchical, authoritarian (dominator) model. The Group is inspired by the anthropological and cultural work of Riane Eisler, an American whose writings have been influential across a range of fields—law, economics, anthropology—around the world. Riem’s Group focuses on exploring the partnership/dominator dynamic in World Literatures in English, with Riem particularly interested in the literature of India, Canada and Australia. She studied at the University of Queensland in the 1980s and has visited Australia many times.' 

(Introduction)

Henry Moss, Australian Women Poets of WW1, Elza de Locre, David Gilbey , single work review
— Review of Henry Moss : His Wreath of Song: The Collected Verse of an Early Australian Poet Stephe Jitts , Keith Campbell , Henry Moss , 2020 selected work poetry biography ; Many Such as She : Victorian Australian Women Poets of World War One 2018 anthology poetry biography ;
Yvonne Smith, David Malouf and the Poetic : His Earlier Writings, Patrick Buckridge , single work review
— Review of David Malouf and the Poetic : His Earlier Writings Yvonne Smith , 2017 multi chapter work criticism ;
Anne Brewster and Sue Kossew, Rethinking the Victim : Gender and Violence in Contemporary Australian Women's Writing, Delys Bird , single work review
— Review of Rethinking the Victim : Gender and Violence in Contemporary Australian Women's Writing Anne Brewster , Sue Kossew , 2019 multi chapter work criticism ;
'Published in the Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures Series with the assistance of an ARC Discovery Grant, Rethinking the Victim situates itself in the troubled context of violence against women, a broad field which includes family violence as well as many other forms. The authors refer to a range of major Reports, both international and Australian, into violence against women in all its manifestations, which detail horrifying statistics about its prevalence. In turn, that work recognises such violence as a human rights issue, with ‘widespread social, economic and political impact and effects.’ Anne Brewster and Sue Kossew also link increased contemporary attention to this field with the rise of feminist activism and theory in the 1970s, which brought the issue, particularly of domestic violence, from the private into the public sphere.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 4 May 2021 13:23:29
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