AustLit
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Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Australian Studies in Europe and the Omnipresent Elephant,
single work
criticism
(p. 2-8)'This article discusses the current status and the raison d'être of European Australian Studies. It begins with a short history of the evolution of Australian Studies in Europe with a focus on Denmark, which happens to have one of the longest records of Australian Studies. It then moves to consider the interconnections between Australian Studies and Commonwealth Studies/Postcolonial Studies in (continental) Europe, and points to different possibilities that have been available to European based scholars. The article finishes with some considerations concerning the future developments of EASA and European Australian Studies, suggesting the best way forward may lie in developing more European based perspectives on Australian Studies and urges the need to find ways of establishing more sustained collaborations across Europe, with a particular view to make the most of the interdisciplinary reality of European Australian Studies.' Source: Lars Jensen.
- EASA : The European Association for Studies of Australia, single work criticism (p. 9-11)
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Realigning the Spiritual Compass : Representations of Terrorism in Some Recent Australian Fiction,
single work
criticism
(p. 23-24)'This article examines how terrorism is represented in three Australian novels, Janette Turner Hospital's Due Preparations for the Plague (2003) and Orpheus Lost (2007), and Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist (2006). It argues that, despite their ostensible topic, the novels tend to ignore or distort the reality of terrorism and its causes. Flanagan is more interested in the way some individuals and groups exploit the fear of terrorism to achieve their own ends, while Turner Hospital creates a paranoid world which does not allow any real understanding of what terrorism is about. The social preoccupations in the three novels, insightful as they are, remain largely disconnected from terrorism.' Source: Xavier Pons.
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Globaloney and the Australian Writer,
single work
criticism
(p. 45-63)'The essay looks at the extent to which Australian literature is part of transnational communication networks that are generally accepted as being part of the "global condition" of the late-capitalist world. Without wishing to deny that globalization exists, the essay suggests that much of the rhetoric surrounding it is "globaloney", and that contemporary debates about the globalization of Australian literature are not immune. The essay also looks at the "globaloney" underlying continuing debates about expatriation and cultural nationalism, using specific examples drawn from the work of Peter Carey and Germaine Greer.' Source: Graham Huggan.
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'Their Graves Are Green, They May Be Seen': Geoff Page’s 'Visible Histories',
single work
criticism
(p. 64-72)'Geoff Page's most sustained approach to settler history as twinned achievement and failure appears in the triptych: Invisible Histories (1989), The Great Forgetting (1996) and Freehold (2005). In these mixed-genre texts Page writes obsessively from within the contemporary dispensation of the politics of regret, searching for registers and modes in which responsible witness may be carried out with respect to the foundational historical myths of the nation. The problem with foundation chronicles for the ancestors of people who invaded, murdered and appropriated the land of others can be referred to the current debate around the notions of "guilt" and "shame". Despite Page's collaboration with the Aboriginal artist Pooaraar in The Great Forgetting, and his ambition to bring differing stories into a useful confluence, the task of writing a healing history might be impossible for reasons that lie beyond the writer's strategies or good-will.' Source: David Callahan.
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'Dry and Upside Down' on Telegraph Wire : The Geopoetics of the Line in Australian Poetry,
single work
criticism
(p. 73-89)
'This essay traces what it sees as a geopoetic trope in Australian literature: the poetic verse-line as a boundary-fence. Basing itself on poems by John Kinsella, Judith Wright, Phillip[sic] Hodgins, Randolph Stow and Les Murray, the poem argues for a development of this trope in the context of the wider geopoetic endeavour in which Australian landscape poetry has been involved: of coming to terms with a new environment and the Aboriginal culture already geopoetically there.
Following Tim Ingold's reinterpretation of the line in human culture in Lines: A Brief History, it sees the line, rather than metrics or rhythm (or the line as a reflection of breaks in rhythm) as the defining characteristic of verse in an age of writing. The verse-line is how poetry spatially imprints the temporal order of a culture on a perceived world, but also how it reflects on that world within the space of a poem. Traditional European poetry measures the verse-line as a plough-furrow (the etymology of versus), a retracing of patterns, which the essay argues, New World postcolonial literatures de-measure: in Canadian landscape poetry the line becomes the overwhelming horizon; in Caribbean poetry the tidalectic wave; in Australian poetry the boundary fence, ambiguously demarcating what is inside and outside.' Source: Martin Leer.
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Cultural Encounters and Hyphenated People,
single work
criticism
(p. 90-96)'Cultural encounters are a dominant feature of contemporary society. Identities are ever-changing ‘routes’ as Hall and others have stated, so we become insiders and outsiders to our own lives. The manifaceted expression of cultural belonging and its formation is illustrated by examples from Australasian writers who express not only the conflict of belonging to more than one culture, but also its inherent value. Such writers provide the reader with alternative ways of reading culture and illustrate the increasing trend to see ourselves as hyphenated people belonging nowhere specific in a globalised world.' Source: Anne Holden Rønning.
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Bruce Chatwin and the Aboriginal Story 'Murgah Muggui' : Threading Songlines and Webs of Lives,
single work
criticism
(p. 108-115)
'This essay works within the lines of the partnership literary theory and it focuses on the importance of analogical thinking in literary criticism. Its aim is to demonstrate how the literary text (in all its possible expressions), especially in postcolonial literatures, is influenced by 'native' oral traditions and narratives that work within an analogical rather than logical framework. The Aboriginal mythological story "Murgah Murrui" and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (1987) will be shown as working within similar narrative structures. Chatwin is inspired by an Aboriginal world-view, mirrored in his use of an analogical style and language that imitates and evokes the rhythms of oral narrative. In both The Songlines and "Murgah Murrui" the expression of a partnership, life-enhancing and cooperative mode is an ancient instrument of wisdom, unveiling the immutable and sacred truths of the universe.' Source: Antonella Riem Natale.
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Fallacies of Interpretation : Teaching Benang,
single work
criticism
(p. 116-125)'Reading Kim Scott's Benang concludes my one-semester course on Indigenous literature, whereby I attempt to eliminate five fallacies of interpretation that students encounter while talking and writing about Indigenous knowledges. These are: anachronism, emotional appeal, (lack of) authenticity, politicisation, and othering. I will suggest a complex method of reading, discussion, and course development to avoid these traps. Benang can be used in class, in accordance with my approach to Indigenous literature, because, uniquely, the author showcases these traps as faults of the invading culture, and uses them as literary techniques, rather than fallacies of interpretation.' Source: Gabriella T. Espák.
