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Full Description
Australia has been seen as a land of both punishment and refuge. Australian literature has explored these controlling alternatives, and vividly rendered the landscape on which they transpire. Twentieth-century writers left Australia to see the world; now Australia's distance no longer provides sanctuary. But today the global perspective has arrived with a vengeance.
In Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead, Nicholas Birns tells the story of how novelists, poets and critics, from Patrick White to Hannah Kent, from Alexis Wright to Christos Tsiolkas, responded to this condition. With rancour, concern and idealism, modern Australian literature conveys a tragic sense of the past yet an abiding vision of the way forward.
Birns paints a vivid picture of a rich Australian literary voice - one not lost to the churning of global markets, but in fact given new life by it. Contrary to the despairing of the critics, Australian literary identity continues to flourish. And as Birns finds, it is not one thing, but many.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Australian literature: from modern to contemporary
1. Australian literature in a time of winners and losers
2. Christina Stead: Australian in modernity
3. 'Medium-sized mortals': Elizabeth Harrower and the crisis of late modernity
4. The long and the short of it: the shape of contemporary Australian literature
The affects of contemporary Australian literature
5. The ludicrous pageant: challenging consensus through rancour
6. Failing to be separate: race, land, concern
7. Australia's international styles: the idealisms of architecture and mobility
Australian literature in the world market
8. Australian abroad: Peter Carey's inside course
9. History made present: Hannah Kent and Eleanor Catton
Afterword: sly change
Works cited
Index
