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Issue Details: First known date: 2012... 2012 Dick the Poet : 'Allegorical Tendencies' in Robbery under Arms
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Rolf Boldrewood's novel Robbery Under Arms is known for its action, adventure and frank depiction of life in Australia during the gold rush. It is also known for its didacticism, which critics tend to find disagreeable (Green 257; Rosenberg 488; Dowsley 75; Turner 240). Despite this recognition, the scholarship that explores the novel's didactic nature is limited to religious scholars like Veronica Brady, who suggests that Dick's narrative represents a surrender to cultural norms rather than an allegory symbolizing a genuine spiritual transformation (41). This paper, however, seeks to create a new discussion that will draw out the Christian-centered 'allegorical tendencies' in Robbery Under Arms.' (Author's introduction)

Notes

  • Epigraph: I thought how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion since childhood.[..] The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all this things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.

    -C.S. Lewis, 'Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said'

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Antipodes vol. 26 no. 1 June 2012 Z1875676 2012 periodical issue 2012 pg. 41-45
Last amended 25 Jul 2012 14:56:36
41-45 Dick the Poet : 'Allegorical Tendencies' in Robbery under Armssmall AustLit logo Antipodes
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