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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Influenced by Charles Dickens's Great Expectations.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille
- Sound recording.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
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Fiction and Fakements in Colonial Australia
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Studies , September vol. 23 no. 3 2020; (p. 360-370)'The imaginations of convicts in Australia became attuned to the pairing of opposites and this led to strange tensions in their way of representing things. On Norfolk Island the meanings of words were reversed, so that ‘good’ meant ‘bad’ and ‘ugly’ meant ‘beautiful’. This undermining of official meanings produced the argot called the ‘flash’ or ‘kiddy’ language of the colony. Designed at first to keep private sentiments from being inspected, it eventually supported a system of dissident actions called ‘cross-work’ or ‘cross doings’. One word loomed large amidst these inversions: ‘fakement’, meaning booty, forgery or deceit. The verb has more extensive meanings: rob, wound, shatter; ‘fake your slangs’ means break your shackles. It also meant performing a fiction and accepting the consequences of it.' (Publication abstract)
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Europe as Alternative Space in Contemporary Australian Fiction by Carey, Tsiolkas and Jones
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia , vol. 10 no. 2 2019;'This article investigates imaginings of Europe in contemporary Australian fiction in order to explore whether (traveling to) Europe provides alternative points of reference to discourses on nation, belonging, and identity beyond the (settler) postcolonial. The article sets out to compare recent works by Peter Carey, Christos Tsiolkas and Gail Jones who narrate Europe against a wide range of backgrounds, covering diverse diasporic, migratory and expatriate experiences, in order to explore the role of Europe as an alternative space, and of European modernities in particular, in the Australian literary imagination. Concentrating on Jack Maggs (1997), Dead Europe (2005) and A Guide to Berlin (2015), the article has a threefold focus: Firstly, it analyses the representation of European spaces and explores how the three novels draw attention to multiple modernities within and beyond Europe. Secondly, it demonstrates how all three novels, in their own way, reveal European modernities to be haunted by its other, i.e. death, superstition, ghosts, or the occult. Thirdly, these previous findings will be synthesized in order to determine how the three novels relate Europe to Australia. Do they challenge or perpetuate the protagonists’ desire for Europe as an ‘imaginary homeland’? Do references to Europe support the construction of national identity in the works under review, or do these references rather point to the emergence of multiple or transnational identities?'
Source: Abstract.
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“Ripped and Tortured Skin” : Mapping the Body in Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Ariel , April - July vol. 50 no. 2-3 2019; (p. 191-217) 'This article reads Peter Carey’s novel Jack Maggs (1997) through a focus on mapping and mobility. Following John Thieme’s recent attention to postcolonial literary geographies, the article argues that ideas of mapping in the text move away from fixed notions of place and space in order to disrupt colonial dynamics of control and power. It suggests that Jack Maggs explores the concept of vernacular cartography, in which bodies bear their own maps of trauma and transience. The eponymous Jack Maggs destabilizes the borders of Empire through his mobility, though he in turn faces attempts by other characters to manage and discipline his itinerant body. Similarly, the article considers how Carey’s fictional mobility—his engagement with Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and his representation of Victorian England—challenges the literary maps that had long been used to fix Australian identity. Through its concern with mobile bodies, Jack Maggs performs a postcolonial cartography that blurs notions of maps and how they represent the bodies of people, texts, and nations.' (Publication abstract) -
Jack Maggs and Peter Carey's Fiction as a World
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 31 no. 2 2017; (p. 326-341)'[...]Peter Widdowson argues that Jack Maggs, along with a number of other counterdiscursive novels, are books that "almost invariably have a clear cultural-political thrust": " That is why the majority of them align themselves with feminist and/or postcolonialist criticism in demanding that past texts' complicity in oppression . . . be revised and re-visioned as part of the process of restoring a voice, a history and an identity to those hitherto re-visionary fiction exploited, marginalized and silenced by dominant interests and ideologies" (505-6). Because of the novel's overt generic subversiveness and its direct engagement with Victorian literature, it is not a surprise that Jack Maggs has been viewed as a predictable category through this kind of reductive and self-affirming lens more than most of Carey's other novels have. Savery was married in England and had a son named Henry, who, like his namesake Maggs's adopted son, would have been twenty-one years old in 1837. [...]of the only three copies left of the original manuscripts of Saver y's Quintos Servinton, one is held in the Mitchell Library in Sydney, where Maggs's fictional letters are preserved. [...]it is that language and literature jointly provide political foundations for a nation" (World 34). Schmidt-Haberkamp comments on the usage of the phrase "such is life" by Great Expectations' working-class Joe and Maggs and the way that it reverberates with the nationalist spirit of Joseph Furphy's classic Australian novel Such Is Life: "Containing the fictional diaries of Tom Collins, a former bullocky, the novel in 1897 was offered to The Bulletin for serial publication by its author with the description: 'Temper democratic; bias, offensively Australian'" (258). [...]Jack Maggs is as much a text about Carey as it is about Dickens, Maggs, and Oates and the literary cultures that all of these "authors" dwell in and represent, divided around two literary poles of England and Australia.' (Publication abstract)
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The Narrow Road to the Deep North and the De-Sacralisation of the Nation
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Le Simplegadi , no. 16 2016; (p. 74-85)Richard Flanagan’s novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North represents yet another addition to the catalogue of Australian war experience literature. The awards and accompanying praise the novel has earned since its release in 2013 reflects a widespread appreciation of its ability to reimagine Australia in a saturated terrain. Flanagan’s novel can be read as a critique of the rise of militant nationalism emerging in the wake of Australia’s backing of Bush’s ‘war on terror’ and the idea that the arrival of boat refugees requires a military and militant response. This article discusses how the novel’s shift from battle heroics to the ordeal of POWs in the Thai jungle represents a reimagining – away from the preoccupation with epic battles – but not necessarily a challenge to the overriding emphasis on baptism of fire narratives as the only truly national narratives.
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[Review] Jack Maggs
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , April no. 14 2003;
— Review of Jack Maggs 1997 single work novel ; The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith 1994 single work novel ; Oscar and Lucinda 1988 single work novel ; Illywhacker 1985 single work novel ; The Tax Inspector 1991 single work novel ; Collected Stories 1994 selected work short story -
Second Look
2004
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 5 September 2004; (p. 23)
— Review of Jack Maggs 1997 single work novel -
[Review] Jack Maggs
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die 2006; (p. 860)
— Review of Jack Maggs 1997 single work novel -
Carey Lives Up to Great Expectations
1997
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 10 August 1997; (p. 7)
— Review of Jack Maggs 1997 single work novel -
Comeuppance from Down Under in Dickens of a Book
1997
single work
review
— Appears in: The Times , 18 September 1997; (p. 43)
— Review of Jack Maggs 1997 single work novel -
Peter Carey's Jack Maggs and the Trauma of Convictisn
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 17 no. 2 2003; (p. 124-132) -
Writing Nineteenth-Century Fiction in the Twentieth Century
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Publications of the Mississippi Philological Association 2002; (p. 53-60) -
Rewriting the Empire of the Imagination: The Post-Imperial Gothic
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , vol. 39 no. 2 2004; (p. 61-71) Renk's thesis is that Carey and Byatt 'parody the style and conventions of Victorian literature, as they also critique and satirize the Imperial Gothic novel.' She argues that 'while the Imperial Gothic novel reveals the anxieties of ebbing Empire, the Post-Imperial Gothic novel [of Carey and Byatt] exposes how Victorian writers plundered the minds of the marinalized to create art p.62). -
Concealed Meaning in Peter Carey's Jack Maggs
1995
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The CRNLE Reviews Journal , no. 1-2 1995; (p. 106-115) Byrne discusses Carey's novel as being essentially an exploration of the process of fictional writing, inviting the reader to think about what underlies the process of selectivity involved in creating stories. -
A Ghost Story in Two Parts : Charles Dickens, Peter Carey, and Avenging Phantoms
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , October vol. 21 no. 4 2004; (p. 40-55)
Awards
- 1998 winner Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 1998 winner Commonwealth Writers Prize — South-East Asia and South Pacific Region — Best Book from the Region Award
- 1998 winner Commonwealth Writers Prize — Overall Best Book Award
- 1997 winner The Age Book of the Year Award — Fiction Prize
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cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
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cAustralia,c
- 1800-1899