AustLit
Texts
-
y
Fly Away Peter
The Bread of Time to Come
1982
London
:
Chatto and Windus
,
1982
Z22123
1982
single work
novella
war literature
(taught in 14 units)
'For three very different people brought together by their love for birds, life on the Queensland coast in 1914 is the timeless and idyllic world of sandpipers, ibises and kingfishers. In another hemisphere civilization rushes headlong into a brutal conflict. Life there is lived from moment to moment. Inevitably, the two young men - sanctuary owner and employee - are drawn to the war, and into the mud and horror of the trenches of Armentieres. Alone on the beach, their friend Imogen, the middle-aged wildlife photographer, must acknowledge for all three of them that the past cannot be held.' (Source: Publisher's website)
-
y
Jandamarra
Mona Oscar
(translator),
Patsy Bedford
(translator),
Selina Middleton
(translator),
June Oscar
(translator),
Danny Marr
(translator),
Leederville
:
Prickly Pear Playscripts
,
2008
Z1397771
2008
single work
drama
(taught in 2 units)
'Growing up just as the first pastoralists were cutting a swathe through his native lands, Jandamarra is one of Australia's great tragic heroes. Station child, angry young man, police tracker of his own people and finally inspirational leader of the most successful indigenous resistance against white settlement, his life was lived on the jagged edge of change and uncertainty. This story belongs the the Bunuba people of the Kimberley-but it speaks to everyone. (Source: Publisher)
-
y
Robbery Under Arms
1890
Paddington
St Lucia
:
Currency Press
Australasian Drama Studies
,
1985
Z549990
1890
single work
drama
(taught in 3 units)
-
y
That Deadman Dance
Sydney
:
Picador
,
2010
Z1728528
2010
single work
novel
historical fiction
(taught in 43 units)
Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding, That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.
'The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.
'But slowly - by design and by accident - things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...' (From the publisher's website.)
Description
This unit explores questions about how literature functions as the social memory of a nation. How does it register the making of place and identity in a newly encountered world? How was the conflicted terrain and violence of the colonial enterprise negotiated textually? How does literature conjure the enduring myths of Australian identity? The unit makes accessible much of the fascinating but little known writing of nineteenth century Australia. It looks closely at a range of different kinds of writing from the beginning of European settlement through to Federation, including work by colonial officers, convict men and women, bush poets, women suffragists, Aboriginal petitioners and popular playwrights as well as contemporary rewritings.
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