AustLit
Texts
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y Akhenaten St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1992 Z248289 1992 single work novel (taught in 6 units)
'Akhenaten was a fascinating, shadowy figure in Egyptian history – archaeologists have discovered attempts to eradicate all traces of his brief reign, but enough remains to tell a remarkable story of incest, heresy, androgyny and a massive cult of personality.
'Like Albert Camus celebrated Caligula, Dorothy Porter's Akhenaten is an attractive warped megalomaniac who attempted to construct an heretical religion around one Sun God, with himself at the centre.
'Akhenaten is a novel in verse that captures the obsessive, erotic nature of its central figure. It is a towering achievement.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Picador ed.)
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y The Eye of the Storm London : Jonathan Cape , 1973 Z463974 1973 single work novel (taught in 7 units)
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y An Imaginary Life : A Novel New York (City) : George Braziller , 1978 Z828578 1978 single work novel (taught in 8 units)
'In prose that is both elegant and lyrical, David Malouf departs from the little-known facts of Ovid's exile beyond the pale of civilization to create a deeply moving novel of extraordinary beauty. An outcast in a vast wasteland at the edge of the Black Sea, Ovid discovers a feral child. As he teaches the boy to speak the language of the civilized world, the child tutors him in his own tongue, the language of nature, and the once barren landscape begins to resonate with meaning.' (Publisher's blurb)
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y Loaded Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)
'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.
'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.
'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.
'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)
Description
This course introduces students to major issues and works in Australian literature, with a particular focus on material from the past two centuries. It will contextualise important works in terms of a range of local and global literary and cultural formations, thus providing a map of the complex and changing nature of national culture.
Supplementary Texts
Long Time Now, Alf Taylor
Judith Wright Collected Poems
Gwen Harwood Collected Poems