The Cyclone As Trope of Apocalypse and Place in Queensland Literature

ResearchOnline@JCU This file is part of the following work: Spicer, Chrystopher J. (2018) The cyclone written into our place: the cyclone as trope of apocalypse and place in Queensland literature. PhD Thesis, James Cook University. Access to this file is available from: https://doi.org/10.25903/7pjw%2D9y76 Copyright © 2018 Chrystopher J. Spicer. The author has certified to JCU that they have made a reasonable effort to gain permission and acknowledge the owners of any third party copyright material included in this document. If you believe that this is not the case, please email [email protected] The Cyclone Written Into Our Place The cyclone as trope of apocalypse and place in Queensland literature Thesis submitted by Chrystopher J Spicer M.A. July, 2018 For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy College of Arts, Society and Education James Cook University ii Acknowledgements of the Contribution of Others I would like to thank a number of people for their help and encouragement during this research project. Firstly, I would like to thank my wife Marcella whose constant belief that I could accomplish this project, while she was learning to live with her own personal trauma at the same time, encouraged me to persevere with this thesis project when the tide of my own faith would ebb. I could not have come this far without her faith in me and her determination to journey with me on this path. I would also like to thank my supervisors, Professors Stephen Torre and Richard Landsdown, for their valuable support, constructive criticism and suggestions during the course of our work together. They, too, had faith from the beginning in my ability to accomplish this project and, although our situations by the end of the project had changed far more than we could possibly have foreseen at the beginning of it, they nevertheless also travelled with me to the end. Richard was adamant that as a cultural historian I needed to further develop my critical reading and writing skills and Stephen, who had to pick up a set of reins when he least expected it, constantly motivated, encouraged and guided me in my writing at those times when I lost my way. For his willingness to be at the same time friend, critical reader and coach, I will always be grateful. I would also like to thank Professor Sean Ulm, who kindly came on board as my advisor/mentor during the latter part of the project and who played a vital role in supporting, organizing and motivating my progress. This thesis would not have taken its final clearly formatted, correctly punctuated, reference-checked and organized shape without the efforts of my friend, colleague and reader, Jennifer Francis, who has my undying thanks for her fearless expeditions into the jungle of my prose and her consequent suggestions for clarification. Finally, for their friendship and moral support over time, I would also like to thank Associate Professor Hilary Whitehouse, Dr Jennifer Gabriel, Dr Mike Wood, Dominique Sandilant and Michelle Dooley. iii Abstract orking within a physical landscape that has felt the impact of tropical cyclones and cyclone surges for some 6000 years, including the largest loss of life from a single W cyclone in Australian recorded history, Queensland writers have for many years attempted to incorporate both the terror and the sublime of the cyclone into their sense of place. Yet, while studies have been carried out into the significance of cyclonic storms in the literature of other geographic areas, there has been surprisingly little examination until this thesis of the literature of tropical cyclones in Queensland, one of the most cyclone-prone areas in the world. The tropical cyclone is so integral to North Queensland place and regional life that it has its own season. To successfully inhabit this place, the Queenslander must live with cyclones, incorporating them into the imaginary as well as the literal life: into the country of the mind as well as the physical environment. In this region of seasonal storm, the cyclone is a defining trope of the literary place, and so it is important to examine its significance there. Cyclones as unpredictable wreakers of chaos and destruction regularly remind us of humankind’s fragility. Although warnings can be given of their approach, the severity of their impact is in the end due to those natural and invisible elements that cannot be controlled. In an effort to cope with the uncontrollable, humankind seeks meaning in the random meaninglessness of chaos and destruction. For some, cyclones are instruments of divine retribution, whereas for others they are an apocalyptic event that reveals the chance for redemption and renewal, and it is such searches for meaning within chaos that are evident in Queensland literature. Some writers, such as Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, have seen within cyclones the Burkean sublime, the beauty within the terror. For other writers, such as Thea Astley, Vance Palmer, and Patrick White, the cyclone brings spiritual epiphany and personal revelation, while also motivating community strength and compassion as people ignore differences and work together to survive and rebuild. Some writers see the cyclone within themselves as a personal trope, as Susan Hawthorne observes in her poetry. Other writers such as Alexis Wright see a deep and abiding spiritual bond between weather and country, between people and place, which speaks of our future as well as our past. This paper, then, will examine how writers in Queensland and of Queensland have sought for meaning within their literary landscape in order to cope with the chaos of their literal place. iv The metaphorics and aesthetics of tropical cyclones permeate Queensland literature. The cyclonic storm in Queensland literature reverberates with contexts of theme and setting, of plot and place, of tropes and tropics that encompass the complicated and symbiotic relations between society, nature, landscape, place and space. The cyclonic storm is a literary trope of both personal and collective awareness, of revelation within the stillness and spirituality of the cyclone’s eye that enables the individual to emerge from the experience transformed. To transcend the tropical cyclone experience, one needs to be open to the epiphany of the revelation as these violent storms strip away the historic human over-growth, leaving room to re-build and for new life to grow. Cyclones can in this way narrate resilience in the face of natural disaster and allegorize the power of cultural consciousness to strengthen and unify communities and regions. Individuals and communities who have been alienated, weakened, or seemingly destroyed can be drawn closer by cyclonic events, discovering in the aftermath that which had previously been hidden, discovering hope and opportunity where previously were despond and despair. Such events and the stories of them can challenge previous human experience, thereby providing opportunity to move forward and rebuild, opportunity for the emergence of the new. While this research is concerned with the implications of the literary cyclone in Queensland, this thesis will also recognize that cyclonic storms and the literature of those storms appear in many other regions. The search for meaning within that literature is a search in which many are engaged around the globe, as we broaden our perception through revelations about the relationship between the individual, society, and the tropical biosphere, and between weather, person, and place. v Forward n the aftermath of surviving Cyclone Yasi, an immense Category 5 system that struck the North Queensland tropical coast in the summer of 2011, during which my wife and I and two I dogs huddled in the hallway protected by mattresses, I took down from a shelf my well- thumbed copy of Kerry Emanuel’s Divine Wind: The history and science of hurricanes, and began to read it once again. As the title suggests, Emanuel examines not just the science of hurricanes but also their significance in history, literature and art, developing an integrated appreciation of cyclonic weather events as part of human culture. As I read, it occurred to me, having so recently endured an encounter with the hurricane’s southern hemisphere equivalent, that Emanuel was posing some significant questions about the interaction between environment, place, and imagination, such as in what way does violent, chaotic, destructive, even life-threatening weather become an experience that provides imaginative inspiration? How does personal experience with and in such weather speak of our relationship with place? In using a weather trope such as a cyclone, what might the artist be saying about themselves and their culture? In this thesis, I have endeavoured to propose some answers to those questions. As a writer in North Queensland, a tropical region prone to cyclones, I was specifically interested in how other writers either living in Queensland or writing about Queensland had responded to these violent weather events. I initially assumed that other researchers must also have been curious about the imaginative response to such a unique feature of the regional environment, yet it became evident very early in my research that no one had yet explored the influence of the cyclone as a trope in the Queensland literary imagination, even though cyclones are the most violent and significant weather system to make regular landfall in the region. This realization only prompted other questions. Was there even a significant body of Queensland

Load more