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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This collection opens up a new field of academic and general interest: Australian medievalism. That is, the heritage and continuing influence of medieval and gothic themes, ideas and cultural practices. Geographically removed from Europe, and distinguished by its eighteenth-century colonial settlement, Australia is a fascinating testing-ground on which to explore the cultural residues of medieval and gothic tradition. These traditions take a distinctive form, once they have been 'transported' to a different topographical setting, and a cultural context whose relationship with Europe has always been dynamic and troubled.
'Early colonists attempted to make the unfamiliar landscape of Australia familiar by inscribing it with European traditions: since then, a diverse range of responses and attitudes to the medieval and gothic past have been played out in Australian culture, from traditional forms of historical reconstruction through to playful postmodernist pastiche.
'These essays examine the early narratives of Australian 'discovery' and the settlement of what was perceived as a hostile, gothic environment; exercises of medieval revivalism and association consonant with the British nineteenth-century rediscovery of chivalric ideals and aesthetic, spiritual and architectural practices and models; the conscious invocation and interrogation of medieval and gothic tropes in Australian fiction and poetry, including children's literature; the transformation of those tropes in fantasy, role-playing games and subcultural groups; and finally, the implication of the medieval past for discussions of Australian nationalism.' (Publication summary)
Notes
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Part I of this book explores manifestations of the medieval and the gothic in Australian writing.
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Marcus Clarke, Gothic, Romance,
single work
criticism
David Matthews examines the production of the Gothic in the fiction of Marcus Clarke.
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Romantic Medievalism and Gothic Horror : Wordsworth, Tennyson, Kendall, and the Dilemmas of Antipodean Gothic,
single work
criticism
Peter Otto focuses 'on the ways in which Kendall uses the Gothic - Gothic medievalism and Gothic primitivism, in particular - to generate a sense of belonging in an alien locale and, often at the same time, a disabling awareness of alienation, violence and loss' (19-20).
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'I See a Strangeness' : Francis Webb's Norfolk and English Catholic Medievalism,
single work
criticism
Andrew Lynch reads sections of Francis Webb's Around Costessey sequence of poems to indicate how the medieval 'is confronted and deployed within the formation of Australian identity' (42).
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'Where No Knight in Armour Has Ever Trod' : The Arthurianism of Jessica Anderson's Heroines,
single work
criticism
Louise D'Arcens examines the differences in the way two heroines from novels by Jessica Anderson read Arthurian legends. She suggests that 'the transition between the two heroines' medievalisms reflects the changing significance of the Middle Ages as an imaginative prism through which Australian experience has been refracted. The development they embody [...] is an index of Australia's transition from colonial dependency at the beginning of the twentieth century to cultural autonomy and sovereignty a the century's end' (62-63).
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Australian 'Everymans' : Post-Medieval Spiritual Adventurers,
single work
criticism
Margaret Rogerson demonstrates types of medievalism in Australian literature, through a discussion of the deployment of the 'everyman' figure.
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Medievallism and Memory Work : Archer's Folly and the Gothic Revival Pile,
single work
criticism
Jenna Mead analyses the relationship between medievalism and memory in a reading of 'two of medievalism's afterlives. [The] first sifts together two medieval towers [in Tasmania] and the sparse and ephemeral historical documents pertaining to one moment in the history of those towers; [the] second reads three documents in what might be called the history of literary studies in Australia and, more narrowly, that history as it focuses on medieval literary studies' (101).
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Medievalism as Heritage : Australian Children's Books,
single work
criticism
Valerie Krips discusses the 'trafficking' in history in three recent Australian children's books. She demonstrates how 'the past as represented in each novel is in the service of present concerns' (123).
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Post Colonialism and Literary Criticism in Australia
Post-Colonialism and Literary Criticism in Australia
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Reading Down Under : Australian Literary Studies Reader 2009; (p. 95-105) Modern Australian Criticism and Theory 2010; (p. 14-27) 'In this essay I want to lay out the context for the development of the study of post-colonial literatures and post-colonial reading strategies, then move on to consider in a little more detail some significant aspects of the field in its early form. I will conclude by examining the effects of post-colonial criticism on ways of reading the work of three Australian writers: Judith Wright, Randolph Stow, and Patrick White' (95). -
'But That the Stone Is Fresh'
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June-July no. 282 2006; (p. 16-17)
— Review of Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture 2005 anthology criticism
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'But That the Stone Is Fresh'
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June-July no. 282 2006; (p. 16-17)
— Review of Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture 2005 anthology criticism -
Post Colonialism and Literary Criticism in Australia
Post-Colonialism and Literary Criticism in Australia
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Reading Down Under : Australian Literary Studies Reader 2009; (p. 95-105) Modern Australian Criticism and Theory 2010; (p. 14-27) 'In this essay I want to lay out the context for the development of the study of post-colonial literatures and post-colonial reading strategies, then move on to consider in a little more detail some significant aspects of the field in its early form. I will conclude by examining the effects of post-colonial criticism on ways of reading the work of three Australian writers: Judith Wright, Randolph Stow, and Patrick White' (95).