AustLit
Literature and the Environment
(ARTS3050)
School of the Arts and Media (formerly the School of English, Media and Performing Arts)
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University of New South Wales
Semester 1 /
2015
Texts
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Also readings of poems by John Kinsella and Judith Wright, as w ell as works by Wordsworth, Clare, Thoreau and Whitman.
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y Carpentaria Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2006 Z1184902 2006 single work novel (taught in 47 units) Carpentaria's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, whose members are the leaders of the Pricklebush people, and their battles with old Joseph Midnight's tearaway Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel is populated by extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, leader of the holy Aboriginal pilgrimage, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the ever-vigilant Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, Angel Day the queen of the rubbish-dump, and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stand like giants in this storm-swept world. (Backcover)
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y Wonders of a Godless World Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2009 Z1604642 2009 single work novel (taught in 7 units) 'On an unnamed island, in a Gothic hospital sitting in the shadow of a volcano, a wordless orphan girl works on the wards housing the insane and the incapable. When a silent, unmoving and unnerving new patient - a foreigner - arrives at the hospital, strange phenomena occur, bizarre murders take place, and the lives of the patients and the island's inhabitants are thrown into turmoil. What happens between them is an extraordinary exploration of consciousness, reality and madness.' (Provided by the publisher.)
Description
Literature and the Environment examines the interchange between literary texts and concepts of Nature. It aims to engage with key social concerns of our time, such as the new cartographies of climate change and globalisation, in the context of literature's ubiquitous concern with the natural world and human society's place within it.
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