Studies in Classic Australian Fiction by Michael Wilding

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Load more

Studies in Classic Australian Fiction By Michael Wilding Australians Abroad (ed. with Charles Higham) Milton's Paradise Lost Marvell: Modern Judgements (ed.) Cultural Policy in Great Britain (with Michael Green) Marcus Clarke: Australian Authors (ed.) Marcus Clarke: Australian Writers & Their Work The Radical Reader (ed. with Stephen Knight) The Tabloid Story Pocket Book (ed.) The Workingman's Paradise by William Lane (ed.) Political Fictions Stories by Marcus Clarke (ed.) Dragons Teeth: Literature in the English Revolution Air Mail from Down Under (ed. with Rudi Krausmann) The Radical Tradition Social Visions The Oxford Book of Australian Short Stories (ed.) Fiction Aspects of the Dying Process Living Together The Short Story Embassy The West Midland Underground Scenic Drive The Phallic Forest Pacific Highway Reading the Signs The Paraguayan Experiment The Man of Slow Feeling Under Saturn Great Climate Her Most Bizarre Sexual Experience This is For You Book of the Reading Somewhere New: New & Selected Stories Studies in Classic Australian Fiction Michael Wilding SYDNEY STUDIES SHOESTRING PRESS Studies in Classic Australian Fiction ©Michael Wilding, 1997 Sydney Studies in Society and Culture 16 ISSN 0812-6402 ISBN 0949405 13 2 Published in Australia by the Sydney Association for Studies in Society and Culture University of Sydney, NSW 2006 Distributed by Sydney Studies PO Box 575 Leichhardt Sydney, NSW 2040 (02) 9569 1452 Published in the United Kingdom by Shoestring Press 19 Devonshire Avenue, Nottingham NG9 1 BS Formatting and design by Annette Krausmann Printed in Australia by Berget Pty Ltd Published with the support of the Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities Contents Weird Melancholy: the stories of Marcus Clarke 9 Henry Lawson's Socialist Vision 32 William Lane's The Workingmen s Paradise: Pioneering Socialist Realism 76 Joseph Furphy's Such Is Life 109 The Historical Novel: Jack Lindsay's 1649 134 Christina Stead's Seven Poor Men of Sydney 160 Christina Stead's The Puzzlelzeaded Girl: The Political Context 187 Patrick White and the Politics of Modernism 221 Acknowledgements Acknowledgement is gratefully given to the following publications in which earlier versions of this material first appeared. Marcus Clarke: in Mapped But Not Known, ed. P. R. Eaden and F. H. Mares (Wakefield Press, Adelaide) (Festschrift for Brian Elliott). Heny Lawson: part appeared in The Rise of Socialist Fiction, ed. H. Gustav Klaus (Harvester Press, Sussex: StMartin's Press, New York), part in Visions Critiques, I (The Sorbonne, Paris), and part in 111e Radical Tradition (the 1992 Colin Roderick lectures). (Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, James Cook University, Townsville). William Lane: Words & World.f, ed. Stephen Knight&S.N. Mukherjee(SydneyStudies in Society & Culture, I). Joseph Furphy: The Radical Tradition. Jack Lindsay: Culture & History,ed. Bernard Smith (Hale & lremonger, Sydney) (Festschrift for Jack Lindsay). Christina Stead, Seven Poor Men of Sydney: part in Southerly, (Sydney), part in The Radical Tradition. Christina Stead, The Puuleheaded Girl: part in London Magazine, part in Words & Wordsmiths, ed. G. Barnes, J. Gunn, S. Jensen and L. Jobling, (University of Sydney) (Festschrift for H. L. Rogers). Patrick White: RANAM: Recherches Anglaises et Nord-Americaines (University of Strasbourg) (Festschrift for Simone Vauthier). Earlier versions of this material were given at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference, University of Queensland; the American Association for Australian Studies conference, Penn State University; the Australian Studies Association conference, Commonwealth Institute and the Sir Robert Menzies Australian Studies Centre, University of London; the International Symposium on the Short Story, the Sorbonne; the Perceptions of a Culture symposium, Yale University; the Patrick White day, University of Newcastle and Mattara festival. And at the University of Wales, Bangor; University of Mannheim; J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt; University of Braunschweig; University of Ljubljana; University of Oregon, Eugene; Stanford University; British Studies Seminar, Harry Ransom Centre, University of Texas at Austin; University of Paris VII; University of Copenhagen; University of Vienna; University of Ttibingen; University of Gottingen; University of Graz; University of Klagenfurt; Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga; University of Sydney; BBC Radio 3; at the University of Queensland during my tenure of the George Watson fellowship; and at the James Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville, as the Colin Roderick lectures. To Pauline and John Lucas .
Recommended publications
  • Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 43.2 | 2021 the Counter-Cultural Art of Dealing with Dirt: the Balmain Group’S Sexual Rev

    Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 43.2 | 2021 the Counter-Cultural Art of Dealing with Dirt: the Balmain Group’S Sexual Rev

    Commonwealth Essays and Studies 43.2 | 2021 In Other Worlds The Counter-Cultural Art of Dealing with Dirt: The Balmain Group’s Sexual Revolution in Print Jean-François Vernay Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/ces/7534 DOI: 10.4000/ces.7534 ISSN: 2534-6695 Publisher SEPC (Société d’études des pays du Commonwealth) Electronic reference Jean-François Vernay, “The Counter-Cultural Art of Dealing with Dirt: The Balmain Group’s Sexual Revolution in Print”, Commonwealth Essays and Studies [Online], 43.2 | 2021, Online since 23 July 2021, connection on 29 July 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ces/7534 ; DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.4000/ces.7534 This text was automatically generated on 29 July 2021. Commonwealth Essays and Studies is licensed under a Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International. The Counter-Cultural Art of Dealing with Dirt: The Balmain Group’s Sexual Rev... 1 The Counter-Cultural Art of Dealing with Dirt: The Balmain Group’s Sexual Revolution in Print Jean-François Vernay If Martians had arrived in Australia before 1972 and read our literature, they would not have had any clue about how human beings reproduced. No wonder our population was going down. Frank Moorhouse 1 Seeking to challenge the conservative and heteronormative views prevalent in Australian society right up until the 1970s, a group of writers, most of whom were geographically attached to Balmain, decided to give an empirical touch to the philosophical teachings of John Anderson in the 1950s and to the 1960s anti- authoritarian movement, both of which essentially stressed freedom of choice, questioned conventional morality and exposed the way society was setting restrictions on individual liberties.
  • Literature Review

    Literature Review

    The impact of the counterculture on Australian cinema in the mid to late 20th century A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Art Administration (Hons) within the School of Art History and Art Education, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Fiona Hooton 1 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet Surname or Family name: Hooton First name: Fiona Other name/s: Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: School: School of Art History and Art Education Faculty:COFA Title: The impact of the counterculture on Australian cinema in the mid to late 20th century 2 Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE) This thesis discusses the impact of the counterculture on Australian cinema in the late 20thcentury through the work of the Sydney Underground Film group, Ubu. This group, active between 1965 -1970, was a significant part of an underground counter culture, to which many young Australians subscribed. As a group, Ubu was more than a rat bag assemblage of University students. It was an antipodean aspect of an ongoing artistic and political movement that began with the European avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century and that radically transformed artistic conventions in theatre, painting, literature, photography and film. Three purposes underpin this thesis: firstly to track the art historical links between a European avant-garde heritage and Ubu. Experimental film is a genre that is informed by cross art form interrelations between theatre, painting, literature, photography and film and the major modernist aesthetic philosophies of the last century.
  • Representation and Reinterpretations of Australia's War in Vietnam

    Representation and Reinterpretations of Australia's War in Vietnam

    Vietnam Generation Volume 3 Number 2 Australia R&R: Representation and Article 1 Reinterpretations of Australia's War in Vietnam 1-1991 Australia R&R: Representation and Reinterpretations of Australia's War in Vietnam Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration Part of the American Studies Commons Recommended Citation (1991) "Australia R&R: Representation and Reinterpretations of Australia's War in Vietnam," Vietnam Generation: Vol. 3 : No. 2 , Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration/vol3/iss2/1 This Complete Volume is brought to you for free and open access by La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vietnam Generation by an authorized editor of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ON THIS SITE WILL BE ERECTED A MEMORIAL FOR THOSE WHO DIED & SERVED IN THE VIETNAM WAR maoKJwmiiMisanc? wmmEsnp jnauKi«mmi KXm XHURST rw svxr Representations and Reinterpretations of Australia's War in Vietnam Edited by Jeff Doyle & Jeffrey Grey Australia ReJR Representations and Reinterpretations o f Australia's war in Vietnam Edited by Jeff Doyle & Jeffrey Grey V ietnam Generation, I n c & Burning Cities Press Australia ReJR is published as a Special Issue of Vietnam Generation Vietnam Generation was founded in 1988 to promote and encourage interdisciplinary study of the Vietnam War era and the Vietnam War generation. The journal is published by Vietnam Generation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation devoted to promoting scholarship on recent history and contemporary issues. Vietnam Generation, Inc. Vice-President President Secretary, Treasurer HERMAN BEAVERS KALI TAL CYNTHIA FUCHS General Editor Newsletter Editor Technical Assistance KALI TAL DAN DUFFY LAWRENCE E HUNTER Advisory Board NANCY AN1SFIELD MICHAEL KLEIN WILLIAM J.
  • Sex and the Sydney Context of Michael Wilding’S Early Fiction

    Sex and the Sydney Context of Michael Wilding’S Early Fiction

    SEX AND THE SYDNEY CONTEXT OF MICHAEL WILDING’S EARLY FICTION Ian Harold Jamieson Doctor of Philosophy 2009 University of Western Sydney ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to thank retired Associate Professor Ken Stewart who helped me start this thesis and suggested Michael Wilding as an area of research. I would also like to thank retired Associate Professor Frances de Groen who kept me on task and the thesis moving along. Finally, I would like to thank Professor Leon Cantrell who saw the thesis through to completion. Each person has willingly given of their time and professional expertise. Most importantly they have always been understanding, tolerant and most of all always encouraging. I have always thought I could rely them. Without their input I would not be submitting this thesis. I owe them a debt. STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICATION The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution. ………………………………………… TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter One Getting Bearings and Setting a Course 1 Chapter Two Surveying Some Terrain: A Selective Literature Review 33 Chapter Three An Encouraging Push 93 Chapter Four Seeing the Sites 115 Aspects of the Dying Process 115 Living Together 155 Scenic Drive 215 Conclusion 257 Bibliography 261 i ABSTRACT Since his arrival in Australia in 1963 Michael Wilding has been extremely active in academia, publishing and the writing of fiction. He has been industrious and prolific in all spheres.
  • The New Australian Poets: Networks and the Generation of 68 Fiona Elizabeth Allan Scotney

    The New Australian Poets: Networks and the Generation of 68 Fiona Elizabeth Allan Scotney

    The New Australian Poets: Networks and the Generation of 68 Fiona Elizabeth Allan Scotney Bachelor of Arts, University of Queensland Graduate Diploma of Learning and Teaching, University of Southern Queensland Master of Arts (English Studies) University of Southern Queensland A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Queensland in 2014 School of English, Media Studies, and Art History ii Abstract The “generation of 68” is a contested label applied to a loose group of Australian poets who began writing and publishing in the late 1960s. The thesis questions how this loose group of Australian poets can be understood as a generation, and uses network theory to map connections between generation of 68 poets. The application of network theory to literary studies presents a method for addressing as individuals poets who are also aligned with a generation. Central to the thesis is John Tranter’s The New Australian Poetry (1979) anthology, which attempts a definition of the generation of 68, and includes twenty-four poets Tranter identifies as belonging to the generation of 68. These poets include Robert Adamson, Charles Buckmaster, Michael Dransfield, and John Forbes. The generation of 68 poets presents unique difficulties to the researcher and critic due to the imprecise nature of literary generations. One of the main guiding questions for this thesis has been how to critically approach a group like the generation of 68 when the label, and the generation itself, is still so contested. Critical approaches to the generation of 68 often overlook the importance of the group dynamics on the poets and the poetry.
  • Letters  Chronicle Quodlibet                     

    Letters  Chronicle Quodlibet                     

    March2015 No.514 VolumeLix,Number3 , Mervyn Kimm, Graham Bradley, Christopher Rule, Michael O’Connor Letters 3 Damien Cremean, Hal G.P. Colebatch, Peter McCloy, L. Peter Ryan John O’Sullivan Chronicle 7  Peter Coleman quodlibet 9 Peter Murphy Economy Post-Creative America’s in Conflicts Class New Society 12  Daryl McCann Freedom of War the or, War, Long The politics 18  Anthony O’Hear Life Public in Religion religion 24  George Jonas Chronology A Spies: and Traitors history 34  Anne Henderson London Wartime in Menzies about Day-Dreaming 44   Hal G.P. Colebatch Election 1977 the and People” “Boat The 50   Michael Connor Musicals Other and Frocks in Rocks Redback theatre 58  Constitution Shimon Cowen Australian the and Tradition Religious God, theconstitution 62  Painter Douglas Hassall Constant The Auerbach: Frank art 70  Commodity Ian Callinan a as Art 76   B.J. Coman Birdlore culture 80  John Whitworth Muse Poetic the and Cope Wendy Malley, Ern poetry 86  Patriotism Chris Walder about Thought Really Johnson Dr What literature 88  Alan Gould XVII Takes Short firstperson 90  David Fulton Radio of Days Golden The 94   Iain Bamforth Avenues and Forests Trees, environment 96  Neil McDonald Iraq in Even-Handed film 99  Daniel Hart Bay Milne After story 101  Pomerantsev Derek Parker Peter by Nothing is True and Everything is Possible books 104  Peter Costello Coleman Peter by Memoirs of a Slow Learner 106   Patrick Morgan Wilding Michael Wild Bleak Bohemia by 107   ryan 111 The Kiap’s Retort
  • Australian Literature in Serbian Translation1

    Australian Literature in Serbian Translation1

    Australian Literature in Serbian Translation1 NATAŠA KAMPMARK University of Novi Sad, Serbia The primary aim of this paper is to trace the history of the reception of Australian literature in Serbia, from the first-recorded translation to the present.2 The pattern of reception established and analysed in the paper reveals three distinct spikes of interest in Australian literature over the period being examined, and one considerable dip. However, before focusing attention on the texts, it is necessary to briefly discuss the socio-political and linguistic conditions that are closely related to their reception. What needs to be recognised is that the reception of Australian literature in Serbia started when Serbia was one of six republics which, together with its two autonomous provinces, comprised the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (1946-1963), later renamed into the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY, 1963-1991). The official language in Serbia at the time was ‘Serbo- Croatian’ (or Serbo-Croat or Croato-Serbian). The term ‘Serbo-Croatian’ was the officially- sanctioned hyponym used to refer to the languages spoken by peoples in the republics of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia. Consequently, the reception of Australian literature, as presented in this paper, includes translations into Serbo-Croatian until 1991; that is, before the break-up of the SFRY, when Serbo-Croatian speaking republics formed a linguistic whole and represented a unified literary scene and a single literary market.3 From 1991 until 2003, the reception of Australian literature examined in this paper includes translations into Serbian which were published in the republics of Serbia and Montenegro, which at the time formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, FRY.
  • Contributors

    Contributors

    Contributors Michael Ackland holds the inaugural Colin and Margaret Roderick Chair of English at James Cook University, Townsville. He is currently researching a monograph on Christina Stead and her socialist heritage. Bruce Bennett is Emeritus Professor of English at the Australian Defence Force Academy, University of New South Wales. His books include Homing In (2006), Australian Short Fiction: A History (2002), The Oxford Literary History of Australia (1998) and Spirit in Exile (1991). Current research interests include literature and espionage and expatriate Australian writers. Nicholas Birns is Associate Teaching Professor at Eugene Lang College, The New School, New York. Theory after Theory: An Intellectual History of Literary Theory from 1950 to the Early 21st Century appeared in 2010, and his single-authored Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Critics and Criticism will be published in 2011. Patrick Buckridge is Professor of Literary Studies in the School of Humanities, Griffith University, where he teaches courses on world lit- erature. He has published widely on Australian literary history and the history of reading, and is currently working on a study of Australian reading culture during the interwar period, and a history of the publish- ing house of Harrap. Lawrence Buell is the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Lit- erature at Harvard University. His recent publications include Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the United States and Beyond (2001), Emerson (2003), and The Future of viii • Reading Across the Pacific Environmental Criticism (2005). In 2007 he won the Jay Hubbell Award, Modern Language Association, American Literature Group, for lifetime contributions to American literary studies.
  • 6 Postmodernism in Australian Literature

    6 Postmodernism in Australian Literature

    6 POSTMODERNISM IN AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE Australian literature can be understood as literature of the settler colony representing a complexity of the formation of both Australian cultural identity and its culture. Culture of the original Aboriginal inhabitants was based on oral tradition which was either suppressed or could not compete with Australian literature based on a written tradition. During the colonization of Australia when the country was established as a British penal colony in 1788, Australian literature was influenced by the British literary tradition. Especially in early 19th century Scottish broadside ballads adapted to the convict life and Australian setting as well as Romantic poetry modeled after English Romantic poets (Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley and others) were imitated. The first systematic attempts to form Australian literature that would reflect unique Australian experience were made by the authors who were either contributing to or were the editors of the radical egalitarian and nationalistic journal the Bulletin in the 1890s. Australian colloquial speech, vernacularism, yarn, short stories, the bush experience, bushrangers as symbolic representatives of the resistance towards British colonialism and realistic writing method were the common attributes of these authors (Joseph Furphy, Henry Lawson, Barbara Baynton and many others). With a growing independence (Australia became a dominion, less dependent on Britain when the country became a Commonwealth of Australia in 1901), economic progress and modernity, realistic writing method started to be understood as old-fashioned and unable to express new Australian experience in the 20th century. They were especially such authors as Christina Stead and Patrick White who became the most influential modernist writers attacking traditional and nationalistic concepts of Australian literature based on the bush myth and realistic method of writing associated with it.
  • Non-Australian Settings in Michael Wilding's Selected and New Short Stories Somewhere New

    Non-Australian Settings in Michael Wilding's Selected and New Short Stories Somewhere New

    Michael Wilding's Short Stories Non-Australian Settings in Michael Wilding's Selected and New Short Stories Somewhere New Where is "somewhere new"? As denoted by the title in his new collection of short stories, Michael Wilding perceives it in a symbolic sense, as a place of potential, away from the centre on the decentralizing margin, a place that enables a fresh new start, a future. It can be just anywhere, in Australia on a Sydney beach or the Balmain part of the harbour, in the United States on Jack Kerouac's beloved Mississippi river which really stands for the river Severn in Wilding's native England, or in North Africa. Michael Wilding's (born 1942) recently published collection of twenty new and selected short stories Somewhere New: New and Selected Stories (1996) shows just how very much alive the short story tradition still is on the Australian literary scene. It draws on seven previous volumes from over thirty years of writing, including classics like, for example, "The Man of Slow Feeling" (1986) and "Reading the Signs" ( 1984 ), the title stories of two of his early short story collections, as well as new, previously uncollected pieces on drugs, politics, sex and the literary life. This new book is only one in a series of books Wilding has produced (and managed to get published, which is an achievement in itself) over the past few years, including short stories (This is for You, 1994; Book of the Reading, 1994) and brilliant socially­ conscious literary criticism which sets out to reevaluate some of the major Australian literary oeuvres and which would prove useful to the students and scholars of Australian literature (Social Visions, 1993; The Radical Tradition: Lawson, Furphy, Stead, 1993; Studies in Classic Australian Fiction, 1997).
  • Footnotes to an Australian Gothic Script

    Footnotes to an Australian Gothic Script

    The University of Notre Dame Australia ResearchOnline@ND Arts Book Chapters School of Arts 2009 The Kangaroo Gargoyles: Footnotes to an Australian Gothic Script Gerry Turcotte University of Notre Dame Australia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/arts_chapters Recommended Citation Turcotte, G. (2009). The kangaroo gargoyles: Footnotes to an Australian gothic script. In A. Sarwal, & R. Sarwal (Eds). Reading down under: Australian literary studies. New Delhi, India: SSS Publications. This Book Chapter is brought to you by the School of Arts at ResearchOnline@ND. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts Book Chapters by an authorized administrator of ResearchOnline@ND. For more information, please contact [email protected]. exploring genres - I The Kangaroo Gargoyles: Footnotes to an Australian Gothic Script1 Gerry Turcotte For many, the opening swells of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Toccata & Fugue in D Minor” (1703- 1707) will immerse them immediately in the world of classical music. But for most people, a rather more sinister image is conjured up—perhaps (pre-Lloyd Weber), the Phantom of the Opera, pining for his loved one. Disfigured, injured by society and nature, wounded in body and soul, the Phantom broods on his tragic fate, dreaming of love and music, which he will conjoin in a grotesque fugue that will culminate in kidnapping and murder. A tad melodramatic, perhaps, but then again, for connoisseurs of the Gothic, this will no doubt strike a chord. A thunderstorm, threatening in the background, complements the image, yet another in a long line of “atmospherics,” which have become quintessentially associated with the Gothic and its haunted landscape.
  • CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN WRITERS and EUROPE Lgor M Aver It Is Amazing to See Just How M

    CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN WRITERS and EUROPE Lgor M Aver It Is Amazing to See Just How M

    UDK 821.111(94).09-992"1981199" CONTEMPORARY AUSTRALIAN WRITERS AND EUROPE lgor M aver It is amazing to see just how much travel writing, writing which does not exclusively belong to the travel sub-genre of "creative non-fiction", and also how many non-Australian locales, with emphasis on European and Asian ones, there are in the recent contemporary Australian writing since the 1960s. This perhaps speaks about a certain preoccupation or downright trait in the Australian national character. Perhaps, it is a reflection of a particular condition of being "down under", itself derived from "a tradition of colonialism and post-colonialism; from geographical location, both a deterrent and a spur; from post-Romantic literary tradition, coinciding with the early years of white settlement; and from the universal lure of ideas of travel, never more flourishing than at the present" (Hergenhan, Petersson xiii). Tourism is an increasingly global phenomenon to some extent shaping the physical reality as well as the spiritual world of the people involved in it. Within this globalization process, with the prospect of "cyber" travel, there is, however, always an individual "national" experience of the country of destination that a literary traveller puts into words, an experience which is typical and conditioned by specific socio-political and cultural circumstances. Some travellers, and one must needs distinguish between travellers and tourists, the latter of whom are generally more passively acquiescent about the target country and its culture, are generally fascinated by the development of jet travel, which enables to cross "in a few hours the same distance that cost Marco Polo years of his life" (James 48).