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Adaptations
- form y 1915 Soldiers of the King ABC Television (publisher), 1981 (Manuscript version)x402113 Z1684190 1981 series - publisher film/TV Two country boys enlist in the army and ship out to fight in World War I.
Notes
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Epigraph: Come to the stables all men that are able and give me your poor horses some hay and some corn ...
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also braille, sound recording.
Works about this Work
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y
Postcolonial Heritage and Settler Well-Being : The Historical Fictions of Roger McDonald
Amherst
:
Cambria Press
,
2018
15395794
2018
multi chapter work
criticism
'The Australian writer Roger McDonald is the author of ten novels, two novelisations from and for film scripts, two television scripts, one semi-fictionalised memoir, a collection of essays, and two volumes of poetry. His publication record spans half a century from the late 1960s up until the late teens with his tenth novel, A Sea Chase, published in 2017. His books have achieved a significant record in the Australian list of literary awards and he has gone close to breaking into the major international prizes that distinguish the transnational careers of other contemporary Australian writers such as Thomas Keneally, Peter Carey, David Malouf, and, more recently, Kate Grenville. McDonald’s work has been published in London and New York as well as in the key metropolitan markets of his native Australia, and it has been translated into Spanish, German, and Swedish. 1915, his first novel, was adapted into an Australian Broadcasting Commission television series, which was shown on Australian screens in the early 1980s and distributed internationally.
'McDonald writes about ordinary characters whose lives have often been overtaken by historical forces they do not understand and cannot control. These men and women are commonly defined by whom they know and what they do rather than through the display of extraordinary qualities of mind, sensibility, or virtue. McDonald often situates his characters’ within foundational Australian historical periods such as the convict period, frontier settlement, the development of the pastoral industry, the Great War, the Golden Age of Aviation, and the Second World War and its aftermath. This later post-war period saw the transformation of Anglo-Celtic Australia by waves of initially southern and eastern European migration, followed by Asian and indeed wider international migration. The emerging multicultural character of the country coincided with the decline of rural Australia and the pastoral industry as the preferred locations for representative Australian types and values. These events or periods are well entrenched within the public memory of a White Australia and that enables McDonald to explore his characters’ search for purpose and fulfillment within the mythological registers of his nation’s postcolonial history.
'This study focuses on the books (five novels and the fictionalised memoir) in which McDonald has decided to situate his characters’ search for purpose and well-being within the mythological registers of colonial history. It explores McDonald’s investments in story and his developments in idiom and literary form, as endeavors to engage a wider public in the problem of postcolonial settlement. The common narrative problem is the elusiveness of a condition of Being that is well settled in the web of social, cultural, and environmental connections that are necessary for dwelling. McDonald pursues the possibilities for a wider more satisfying sense of human connection but his representations of the common man under the conditions of postcolonial modernity never allow that to come easily.'
Source: Abstract.
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‘Shapely Experience’ and the Limits of ‘Late Colonial Transcendentalism’ : The Portrait of the Artist as Soldier in Roger McDonald’s 1915
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011; 'This essay argues that Roger McDonald's debut novel 1915 represents a form of literary modernism which rejects the easy aesthetic comforts of 'late colonial transcendentalism' (17). McDonald presents an intricate -- we might even say ritualised -- pattern of subversive counterpoint to 'reveal and dramatise the failure of the subject to escape its own limits, and hence its own history' (McCann 155). The result is a highly self-conscious literary novel that seeks to reconcile the art of high modernism with a postcolonial practice interested in the consequences of public memory.' (Author's abstract)
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A Transnational Gallipoli?
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 51 2011; 'Roger Hillman's essay adds a transnational dimension to representations of an historical event that has become the preeminent site of national memorialisation. In A Transnational Gallipoli?, Hillman contrasts the masculinist heroics and celebratory nationalism of Peter Weir's iconic film, Gallipoli, and Roger McDonald's 1915, with more recent novels and films produced outside Australia's borders that provide alternative forms of cultural memory. Louis de Bernières' Birds Without Wings and Tolga Örnek's documentary film Gallipoli: The Front Line Experience are significant as texts that 'situate the Gallipoli legend in a transnational rather than a national framework, while providing a fuller understanding of how cultural memory works in relation to the national imaginary'.' (Source: Editor's introduction)
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'The Country We Might Have Been' : The Experience of War in Canadian and Australian Literature
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Crabtracks : Progress and Process in Teaching the New Literatures in English : Essays in Honour of Dieter Riemenschneider 2002; (p. 283-304) -
Anzac and Why I Write
1996
single work
biography
— Appears in: Kunapipi , [Double Issue] vol. 18 no. 2-3 1996; (p. 334)
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The Year of Writing Skilfully
1980
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , July no. 80 1980; (p. 51-54)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel ; Passenger 1979 single work novel ; The Year of Living Dangerously 1978 single work novel ; A Cry in the Jungle Bar 1979 single work novel ; 1915 : A Novel 1979 single work novel -
A Reading of Roger McDonald
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: Voices , Winter vol. 4 no. 2 1994; (p. 111-117)
— Review of Shearers' Motel 1992 single work prose autobiography ; Rough Wallaby 1989 single work novel ; Water Man 1993 single work novel ; 1915 : A Novel 1979 single work novel ; Slipstream 1982 single work novel -
Bang's and Whimpers
1979
single work
review
— Appears in: Quadrant , August vol. 23 no. 8 1979; (p. 77-78)
— Review of 1915 : A Novel 1979 single work novel -
Reviews
1979
single work
review
— Appears in: Westerly , December vol. 24 no. 4 1979; (p. 79-82)
— Review of 1915 : A Novel 1979 single work novel -
Untitled
1979
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 7 April 1979; (p. 16)
— Review of 1915 : A Novel 1979 single work novel -
'The Country We Might Have Been' : The Experience of War in Canadian and Australian Literature
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Crabtracks : Progress and Process in Teaching the New Literatures in English : Essays in Honour of Dieter Riemenschneider 2002; (p. 283-304) -
Images of Fear in 1915
1989
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Shock of Battle 1989; (p. 61-71) -
A Transnational Gallipoli?
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 51 2011; 'Roger Hillman's essay adds a transnational dimension to representations of an historical event that has become the preeminent site of national memorialisation. In A Transnational Gallipoli?, Hillman contrasts the masculinist heroics and celebratory nationalism of Peter Weir's iconic film, Gallipoli, and Roger McDonald's 1915, with more recent novels and films produced outside Australia's borders that provide alternative forms of cultural memory. Louis de Bernières' Birds Without Wings and Tolga Örnek's documentary film Gallipoli: The Front Line Experience are significant as texts that 'situate the Gallipoli legend in a transnational rather than a national framework, while providing a fuller understanding of how cultural memory works in relation to the national imaginary'.' (Source: Editor's introduction)
-
‘Shapely Experience’ and the Limits of ‘Late Colonial Transcendentalism’ : The Portrait of the Artist as Soldier in Roger McDonald’s 1915
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011; 'This essay argues that Roger McDonald's debut novel 1915 represents a form of literary modernism which rejects the easy aesthetic comforts of 'late colonial transcendentalism' (17). McDonald presents an intricate -- we might even say ritualised -- pattern of subversive counterpoint to 'reveal and dramatise the failure of the subject to escape its own limits, and hence its own history' (McCann 155). The result is a highly self-conscious literary novel that seeks to reconcile the art of high modernism with a postcolonial practice interested in the consequences of public memory.' (Author's abstract)
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Roger McDonald's ... Biggles for Grown-Ups
1982
single work
criticism
biography
— Appears in: The National Times , 16-22 May 1982; (p. 30)
Awards
- 1979 highly commended National Book Council Award for Australian Literature
- 1979 winner The Age Book of the Year Award — Book of the Year
- 1979 winner Government Biennial Literature Prize (SA)
- 1910s