AustLit

'Elizabeth Jolley (1923—2007), one of the most famous woman writers in Australia, had her own grotesque writing style that could be compared to Patrick White. From today’s perspective, Jolley’s style is simply the reflection of the post-modernist thoughts. But in the 80s and 90s of the last century, when the Australian literary field had quite a vague understanding of postmodernism, Jolley’s style really puzzled her readers a lot. In fact, Jolley was outstanding in her control of so many skills, like stream of consciousness, black humor, parody, repetition, collage, omission, montage and the magical realism, which trapped readers into maze. This paper will analyze the three writing strategies of

"repetition, collage and omission" employed by Jolley in order to interpret her riddle of being grotesque in style.'

Source: Abstract.

'This article is an attempt to discuss the protagonist Eddie Twyborn’s identity issue in Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair. By changing gender to live in different identities, Eddie tries to pursue the ideal identity and become a “complete man” who can love both himself and others. Eddie finally gains the ideal identity and presents the strategy to deal with fragmented identity. White deconstructs the binary opposition of male/female via depicting Eddie’s three gender changes, and reveals the fluidity and instability of identity. White shows readers a beyond humanistic, postmodern solution to identity problem in Twyborn: "bricolage". Different from "androgyny" which focuses on mediation between male and female identity, "bricolage" doesn’t aim for equilibrium of gender but manages identity problem in a more flexible way, which is applying different identities in different relations.'

Source: Abstract.

'My Brilliant Career, published in 1901, is the first and also the most influential work of Australian writer Miles Franklin (1879—1954). It depicts a “new woman image” which represents an ambitious, imaginative, rebellious bush girl and genuinely reflects the late 19th century Australia. She rebels and fights but fails to get out of the colonial women’s miserable life without any patriarchal persecution. She is reproached and excluded by public. She is left lonely and helpless and is nearly on her breakdown. She is a brave warrior of feminism, but still another tragic character of patriarchy.'

Source: Abstract.

'This paper attempts to clarify the issue of the translatability of poetry. However, the question whether poetry is translatable is a paradox because while quite a few renowned poet-translators like Dryden and Paz tend to deny the translation of poetry, poetry has been translated from ancient to present. The key point of the issue is not whether poetry is translatable, but what gets lost in the translation of poetry. Dryden sees the translator as servile, yet Bassnett emphasizes the “creative” spirit in translation, and points out “gain” in the translation against the persistent tendency to overemphasize on “loss” in translation in discussions of translation. This paper hence focuses on the key issue of “loss and gain” in the translation of poetry. As it proceeds to reveal the loss of sound qualities of the original in transferring a SL text to a TL text, it also displays some significant gains in the translation. All this is demonstrated and justified with concrete cases in my translation of an anthology of contemporary Australian poetry.'

Source: Abstract.

'This paper is interested in autobiographical narratives that document and re-present experiences of Indigenous child separation from their families. Reconstructing the memories of the Stolen Generations in the form of autobiography is inevitably subject to mechanisms of selection, verification, and commodification within the dominant discourse. However, it is necessary to recognise the agency of Aboriginal people who tactically unsettle the racial ideology and bring into consciousness what has been forgotten by Australian historiography. By examining how memories of child removal have been shaped in public discourse, and exploring Aboriginal authorial agency in recollecting an archive of separation stories, the paper argues that the multi-faceted memories of the stolen children open up a critical space to expose racial injustices and to articulate Indigenous visions of history, plights and rights.'

Source: Abstract.

'Chinese Australian literature, as one significant part of cultural production in Australia, has been researched from various angles. Present research has shown interests in the representations of the images of Australian or Chinese characters in Chinese Australian writings; representations of cultural citizenships, cultural translation, gender issues and racism; as well as the issue of canonizing Chinese Australian literature as an independent category. Though present research has explored in depth on many Chinese Australian literary works, there are still gaps to fill. Based on the nature of Chinese Australian literature, more research should be done from the angles of memory. As a branch of diasporic literature, Chinese Australian literature writes extensively on the representations of memory, which will be a new research perspective in future studies. By using "memory" as a novel perspective, the study of Chinese Australian literature will not be confined by the "fixed" and "clichéd" notion that it is only able to tell the Western readers about the misery suffered by their Chinese characters, rather, it is a literature fitting into the larger scope of transnational literature and needs a broader sense to understand its topics, contents and aims.'

Source: Abstract.