1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature
In recent years, Australian literature has experienced a revival of interest both domestically and internationally. The increasing prominence of work by writers like Christos Tsiolkas, heightened through television and film adaptation, as well as the award of major international prizes to writers like Richard Flanagan, and the development of new, high-profile prizes like the Stella Prize, have all reinvigorated interest in Australian literature both at home and abroad. This Companion emerges as a part of that reinvigoration, considering anew the history and development of Australian literature and its key themes, as well as tracing the transition of the field through those critical debates. It considers works of Australian literature on their own terms, as well as positioning them in their critical and historical context and their ethical and interactive position in the public and private spheres. With an emphasis on literature’s responsibilities, this book claims Australian literary studies as a field uniquely positioned to expose the ways in which literature engages with, produces and is produced by its context, provoking a critical re-evaluation of the concept of the relationship between national literatures, cultures, and histories, and the social function of literary texts.
Introduction Australian Literature, Companionship, and Viral Responsibility
Jessica Gildersleeve
Section A: Literature in the Colony
Chapter 1 Expressing a New Civilisation: Authorship, Publishing and Reading in the 1890s
Roger Osborne
Chapter 2 The Redemption of the Larrikin at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Michelle J Smith
Chapter 3 The Metropolis or the Bush?
Megan Brown
Chapter 4 The Weeping Kangaroo
Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver
Section B: Early Twentieth-Century Australia
Chapter 5 The Reflective Moment: Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century Australia
Susan Carson
Chapter 6 Among the Autumn Authors: Books and Writers in Interwar Australian Magazines
Sarah Galletly and Victoria Kuttainen
Chapter 7 ‘Caterpillars of the Commonwealth’: Dangerous Books in Australia
Francesca Rendle-Short
Chapter 8 ‘Mad, Muddy, Mess of Eels’: Modern Theatre and Patrick White’s Sensuous Dramaturgy
Janet McDonald
Section C: Contemporary Australia
Chapter 9 ‘Are You With Me?’ Offensiveness and Australian Drama in the 1970s
Julian Meyrick and Jenny Fewster
Chapter 10 Around 1988: Australian Literature, History and the Bicentenary
Eduardo Marks de Marques
Chapter 11 Politics and Contemporary Australian Fiction
Nicholas Birns
Chapter 12 Towards a New Direction in Contemporary Criticism: Cognitive Australian Literary Studies
Jean-François Vernay
Section D: Australian Literary Studies in the Public Sphere
Chapter 13 Literary Criticism in Australia
Emmett Stinson
Chapter 14 Obstetric Realism and Sacred Cows: Women Writers and Book Reviewing in Australia
Melinda Harvey and Julieanne Lamond
Chapter 15 Literary Prizes and the Public Sphere
Alexandra Dane
Chapter 16 Literary Media Entertainment: Author Stardom and the Public (Media) Sphere
Della Robinson
Chapter 17 Australian Literature in the University
Leigh Dale
Chapter 18 An Australian Ethics of Reading?
Maggie Nolan
Section E: Australian Literature and the World
Chapter 19 News from Australia: Global Modernism Studies and the Case of Australian Modernism
Melinda J Cooper
Chapter 20 Hijabi-Bodies and Sartorial Strategies
Devaleena Das
Chapter 21 Australian Literature in Asia: China and India
David Carter and Paul Sharrad
Chapter 22 Australian Writing about Asia
David Walker
Section F: Key Themes in Australian Writing
Chapter 23 Turning the Inside Out: Interiority and Australian Fiction
Peter D Mathews
Chapter 24 Gendering Australian Literature
Alison Bartlett
Chapter 25 ‘Silence is My Habitat’: Judith Wright, Writing, and Deafness
Jessica White
Chapter 26 Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Australian Literature
Daniel Hourigan
Chapter 27 Into the Urban Labyrinth: Helen Garner and the Drug Narrative
Nycole Prowse
Chapter 28 ‘Something New at Hand’: Australian Literature and the Sacred
Lyn McCredden
Chapter 29 Animal Representative Presence: Problems and Potential in Recent Australian Fiction
Clare Archer-Lean
Chapter 30 Landscape (After Mabo)
Tony Hughes-d’Aeth
Chapter 31 ‘The Extraordinary Behind the Ordinary’: A Brief History of Australian Suburban Literature
Nathanael O’Reilly
Chapter 32 Australian Literature and Everyday Life
Andrew McCann
Chapter 33 Emblematic Spaces: Postcoloniality and the Region
Stephanie Green
Section G: Genre in Australian Literary Studies
Chapter 34 Twenty-First-Century Australian Poetry
Sarah Holland-Batt and Ella Jeffery
Chapter 35 Life Writing and Conflict: Love Wins
Kylie Cardell and Kate Douglas
Chapter 36 Reluctant Wandering: New Mobilities in Contemporary Australian Travel Writing
Kate Cantrell
Chapter 37 Australia’s Long Relationship with Romance
Tanya Dalziell
Chapter 38 Magical Migrations: Australian Fairy Tale Traditions and Practices
Nike Sulway
Chapter 39 Shadows in Paradise: Australian Gothic
Gina Wisker
Chapter 40 Australian Television and Literary Criticism
Susan Lever
Chapter 41 Screen Adaptation and Australian Literature
Karina Aveyard
Biography
Jessica Gildersleeve is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Southern Queensland.
