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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Patrick White (1912–1990) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973 and remains one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. This book represents new work by an outstanding list of White scholars from around the globe. This collection of diverse and original essays is notable for its acknowledgement of White’s homosexuality in relation to the development of his literary style, in its consideration of the way his writing ‘works’ on/with readers, and for its contextualizing of his life and oeuvre in relation to London and to London life.' (Publication summary)
Contents
- Introduction, single work criticism (p. 1-13)
-
The Evidence of the Archive,
single work
criticism
(p. 17-34)
'Harris and Webby give an overview of the newly discovered notebooks and manuscripts enhanced by their long experience researching White's writing, and their thorough examination of the 'new' collection's breadth and scope.' (Introduction 7)
-
Leichhardt and Voss Revisited,
single work
criticism
(p. 35-63)
In this essay Angus Nicholls gives a 'new reading of the German romanticism in Voss (1957)' [and] 'provides an inspiring example of what practised hands can do with the hoard.' (Introduction 7)
- Patrick White's London, single work essay (p. 67-80)
-
Elective Affinities Manning Clark, Patrick White and Sidney Nolan,
single work
criticism
(p. 81-100)
'Mark McKenna traces the ups and downs of another queer relationship, the oftentimes unreciprocated love of Australia's 'great' historian Manning Clark for the visionary he saw in White. He shows how Clark's monumental multi-volume History of Australia expresses greater allegiance to the preoccupations of Australia's 'elite' mid-century writers and artists, notably White and Sidney Nolan, than to the work of Clark's contemporaries in the academic discipline of history.' (Introduction 7-8)
-
'Dismantled and Re-Constructed' : Flaws in the Glass Re-visioned,
single work
criticism
(p. 101-115)
'...Georgina Loveridge begins a more overt dismantling of our understanding of White in the wake of his own late re-envisioning of his work. The chapter, then, zeroes in on the potential for critical collapse threatened (or perhaps promised) in the preoccupation with jitters, tremblings, contradictory times, ambivalence, madnesses, revisions and disconcerting revelations in nearly all our chapters. She reads Flaws as a treatise on the nature of truth with White extending a continuous dismantling of his own symbolic apparatus and offering a blueprint for re-reading hes entire work.' (Introduction 8)
-
Patrick White's Late Style,
single work
criticism
(p. 117-128)'...Andrew McCann shows how White's, and our, minor quakes find full expression in Memoirs of Many in One (1986): in hilarity not tragedy. He argues that over the course of his career, White's impulse is towards the farcical collapse of signification which in itself can be figured as a revelatory path to non-revelatory non-understanding. (Introduction 8)
-
Patrick White's Expressionism,
single work
criticism
(p. 131-140)'In 'Patrick White's Expressionism', Ivor Indyk identifies White's exaggeration of small, complex emotional jitters, placing his in the context of both an expressive mode of Australian literature and modernism at large, describing (with eloquent self-reflexivity) the experience of of reading a Patrick White novel', affording insight thereby also into the significance of material objects in White's writing.' (Introduction 8)
-
The Doubling of Reality in Patrick White's The Aunt's Story and Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness,
single work
criticism
(p. 141-153)'This chapter reads two accounts of madness from different discursive fields alongside one another. It looks at how these accounts - one from a fictional text, The Aunt's Story (1948) by Patrick White, and the other from a memoir, Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903) - share common features...' (Author's introduction 141)
-
Desperate, Marvellous Shuttling : White's Ambivalent Modernism,
single work
criticism
(p. 155-162)'Gail Jones...brings Theodor Adorno's characterisation of the post-war era, T.J. Clark's thoughts on modernist visual imagery and Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project into dialogue with White's post-war novel, The Aunt's Story, providing a deeply insightful mediation on its infamous middle section, the 'Jardin Exotique', to reassess the controversial spiritualism of White's work. (Introduction 9)
-
'Time and Its Fellow Conspirator Space' : Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves,
single work
criticism
(p. 163-177)'...Brigid Rooney explores what she refers to as the 'chronotopic system' of the narative in White's A Fringe of Leaves (1976). (Introduction 9)
-
Knockabout World : Patrick White, Kenneth Williams and the Queer Word,
single work
criticism
(p. 181-192)'...Henderson builds on McKenna's comparative biography and on queer theoretical approaches to White's writing, venturing a new interpretation of White's linguistic experimentation via a historical approach.' (Introduction 9)
-
Queering Sarsaparilla : Patrick White's Deviant Modernism,
single work
criticism
(p. 193-204)'...Anouk Lang demonstrates how, now a more overt scholarly exploration is 'out' it can contribute to understandings of modernism's global reach.' (Introduction 10)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Introduction
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Patrick White beyond the Grave : New Critical Perspectives 2015; (p. 1-13)
-
Introduction
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Patrick White beyond the Grave : New Critical Perspectives 2015; (p. 1-13)
