Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Contemporary Australian fiction'
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Dallmann, Tino [Verfasser]. "Telling Terror in Contemporary Australian Fiction / Tino Dallmann." Frankfurt : Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2016. http://d-nb.info/1105292754/34.
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Reid, Michelle. "National identity in contemporary Australian and Canadian science fiction." Thesis, University of Reading, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.413934.
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McGuire, Myles T. "Fruitful approaches: Queer Theory and Historical Materialism in contemporary Australian fiction." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2022. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/230862/1/Myles_McGuire_Thesis.pdf.
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"Fruitful approaches: Queer Theory and Historical Materialism in contemporary Australian fiction" investigates the application of Historical Materialist ontologies to gay-themed, contemporary Australian novels, examining these subjects through the lens of totality and reification.
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Bach, Lisa [Verfasser]. "Spatial Belonging: Approaching Aboriginal Australian Spaces in Contemporary Fiction / Lisa Bach." Gießen : Universitätsbibliothek, 2020. http://d-nb.info/121614284X/34.
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Huggan, Graham. "Territorial disputes : maps and mapping strategies in contemporary Canadian and Australian fiction." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1989. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29115.
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This dissertation represents an attempt to reflect and account for the diversity of maps and mapping strategies in contemporary Canadian and Australian fiction. Its methodology, outlined in the opening chapter, draws on a combination of geographical and literary theory, placing particular emphasis on semiotic and other post-structuralist procedures (reconstructing the map as model; deconstructing the map as structure). The map is first defined as a representational model, as an historical document, and as a geopolitical claim. Its status as model, document or claim brings into play a series of mapping strategies including appropriation, division and marginalization. Attention is paid to the ways in which feminist, regional and ethnic writers have questioned these definitions and resisted or adapted these strategies. Basic principles for a "literary cartography" are thus established deriving from conceptual definitions, social and political implications, and diverse fictional applications of the map.
"Grounds for comparison" are then established between English and French writing in Canada, and between the literatures of Canada and Australia, by outlining a brief history of maps and mapping strategies in those areas. Three significant precursors of the contemporary period of literary cartography are discussed: Patrick White, Margaret Atwood, and Hubert Aquin, leading to an overview of patterns and implications of cartographic imagery in contemporary Canadian and Australian fiction from 1975 to the present. The layout for this overview is fourfold: "Maps and Men" discusses the map as a constrictive or coercive device which reinforces the privileges of a patriarchal literary/cultural tradition; "Maps and Myths" examines the map as a mythic paradigm for the revision or transformation of "New World" history; "Maps and Dreams" exposes the map as an oneiric construct allied to the exercise, but also to the potential critique, of colonial authority, and "Maps and Mazes" outlines the map as a self-parodic analogue for the labyrinthine structure and diversionary tactics of the contemporary (post-colonial) literary text.
Generalizations inevitably made in this overview are offset by a more detailed analysis, from a comparative perspective, of a number of specific texts. Topics for discussion in this section include the deterritorialization of "cartographic space" in contemporary fictions by women in Canada and Australia, the de/reconstruction of "New World" history in Canadian and Australian historiographic metafiction, and the promulgation of alternative hypotheses of synthesis or hybridity in the spatially and culturally decentralized ("international "/"regional ") text. The dissertation concludes by considering the wider implications of these revisionist "cartographic" procedures for post-colonial literatures and for the future of post-colonial societies/cultures seeking to free themselves from the conceptual legacy of their colonial past.Arts, Faculty of
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Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette Weeda-Zuidersma Jeannette. "Keeping mum representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature : a fictocritical exploration /." Connect to this title online, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054/.
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Ham, Rosalie, and rosalieh@optusnet com au. "Representations of men and women of the bush in Australian fiction." RMIT University. Creative Media, 2007. http://adt.lib.rmit.edu.au/adt/public/adt-VIT20080110.100527.
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At the heart of this exegesis is the city-bush gap and the rivalry and stereotypes that gap has generated. I acknowledge how and why our national identity evolved from the writing of the 1890s but I argue that most current artists, particularly novelists, have failed to incorporate the ongoing cultural, societal and industrial changes that have occurred since, particularly in the last thirty years. I assert that the majority of artists still refer to and draw inspiration from established, inaccurate myths and stereotypes rather than the bush and Australian characters of today. Through examining three texts, Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection (Picador, Sydney, 1999), Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded (Random House, Sydney, 1995) and Silences Long Gone (Picador, Sydney, 1998) by Anson Cameron, I also point out how most artists in general have failed to keep pace with changes in the bush city cross-culture. My exegesis attempts to give an account of some deficiencies in contemporary Australian literature. In the creative component of this project, Summer at Mount Hope (Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 2005), I write, as did Anson Cameron in his book, Silences Long Gone, (Pan Macmillan, 1998) of a bush (in 1894) where city and bush rely on each other and technology pushes into the bush uniting city and bush, thus enhancing the economy, the cross cultural interdependence and advancing the commonality between the two. I replace stereotypical characters with less predictable characters whose traits sit easily in either bush or city culture and skew the Traditionalist role of bush and city.
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Bode, Katherine. "In/visibility : women looking at men's bodies in and through contemporary Australian women's fiction /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://adt.library.uq.edu.au/public/adt-QU20060120.161127/index.html.
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Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette. "Keeping mum : representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature - a fictocritical exploration." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054.
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[Truncated abstract] This thesis argues that the non-representation and under-representation of mothering in contemporary Australian literature reflects a much wider cultural practice of silencing the mother-as-subject position and female experiences as a whole. The thesis encourages women writers to pay more attention to the subjective experiences of mothering, so that women’s writing, in particular writing on those aspects of women’s lives that are silenced, of which motherhood is one, can begin to refigure motherhood discourses. This thesis examines mother-as-subject from three perspectives: mothering as a corporeal experience, mothering as a psychological experience, and the articulations and silences of mothering-as-subject. It engages with feminist, postmodern and fictocritical theories in its discussion of motherhood as a discourse through these perspectives. In particular, the thesis employs the theoretical works of postmodern feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva in this discussion . . . A fictional narrative also runs through the critical discussion on motherhood. This narrative, Catherine’s Story, gives a personal and immediate voice to the mother-as-subject perspective. In keeping with the nature of fictocriticism, strict textual boundaries between criticism and fiction are blurred. The two modes of writing interact and in the process inform and critique each other.
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Emanuel, Elizabeth Frances. "Writing the oriental woman : an examination of the representation of Japanese women in contemporary Australian crime fiction." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2009. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/64475/1/Elizabeth_Emanuel_Exegesis.pdf.
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This study considers the challenges in representing women from other cultures in the crime fiction genre. The study is presented in two parts; an exegesis and a creative practice component consisting of a full length crime fiction novel, Batafurai. The exegesis examines the historical period of a section of the novel—post-war Japan—and how the area of research known as Occupation Studies provides an insight into the conditions of women during this period. The exegesis also examines selected postcolonial theory and its exposition of representations of the 'other' as a western construct designed to serve Eurocentric ends. The genre of crime fiction is reviewed, also, to determine how characters purportedly representing Oriental cultures are constricted by established stereotypes. Two case studies are examined to investigate whether these stereotypes are still apparent in contemporary Australian crime fiction. Finally, I discuss my own novel, Batafurai, to review how I represented people of Asian background, and whether my attempts to resist stereotype were successful.
My conclusion illustrates how novels written in the crime fiction genre are reliant on strategies that are action-focused, rather than character-based, and thus often use easily recognizable types to quickly establish frameworks for their stories. As a sub-set of popular fiction, crime fiction has a tendency to replicate rather than challenge established stereotypes. Where it does challenge stereotypes, it reflects a territory that popular culture has already visited, such as the 'female', 'black' or 'gay' detective. Crime fiction also has, as one of its central concerns, an interest in examining and reinforcing the notion of societal order. It repeatedly demonstrates that crime either does not pay or should not pay. One of the ways it does this is to contrast what is 'good', known and understood with what is 'bad', unknown, foreign or beyond our normal comprehension. In western culture, the east has traditionally been employed as the site of difference, and has been constantly used as a setting of contrast, excitement or fear. Crime fiction conforms to this pattern, using the east to add a richness and depth to what otherwise might become a 'dry' tale. However, when used in such a way, what is variously eastern, 'other' or Oriental can never be paramount, always falling to secondary side of the binary opposites (good/evil, known/unknown, redeemed/doomed) at work.
In an age of globalisation, the challenge for contemporary writers of popular fiction is to be responsive to an audience that demands respect for all cultures. Writers must demonstrate that they are sensitive to such concerns and can skillfully manage the tensions caused by the need to deliver work that operates within the parameters of the genre, and the desire to avoid offence to any cultural or ethnic group. In my work, my strategy to manage these tensions has been to create a back-story for my characters of Asian background, developing them above mere genre types, and to situate them with credibility in time and place through appropriate historical research.
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Kenny, Laura Jean. ""Something's happening here! Something's awry!": A creative and critical exploration of 'awryness' in contemporary Australian attachment trauma fiction." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2021. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/210856/1/Laura_Kenny_Thesis.pdf.
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This practice-led thesis explores how an examination of ‘awryness’—conceptualised as an emotional response to environmental stimuli which is characterised by feelings of disorientation and uncertainty—might generate new ways of thinking about the writing, reading, and interpretation of contemporary Australian attachment trauma fiction. In fiction, awryness occurs when the reader encounters something that is unexpected or difficult to categorise. Writing the novel, On Either Side, alongside textual analysis of three novels, reveals just some of the ways that awryness might be induced or evoked in order to represent the effects of attachment trauma on a character.
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Almond, Rosslyn. "Good girls and tough guys, prigs and pornographers: Constructions of gender and sexuality in recent and contemporary Australian fiction." Thesis, Australian Catholic University, 2015. https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/download/54e133835086579963969bc87c8f587fb008b6976879a094c0169df75d054ebb/1599847/201503_ROSSLYN_ALMOND.pdf.
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This dissertation examines in detail the ways in which gender and, as a corollary, sexuality are represented in a selection of contemporary Australian fiction. It encompasses both short stories and novels across a range of genres. The texts I have chosen invite a focus both on the construction of gender in relation to characterisation, and, in turn, on how these constructions can be read as conforming to, or subverting, gender stereotypes—particularly with regard to expressions of sexuality. This thesis comprises analyses of The Mint Lawn (1991) by Gillian Mears, Praise (1992) by Andrew McGahan, the short story collection Suck My Toes (1994) by Fiona McGregor, Loaded (1995) by Christos Tsiolkas, The River Ophelia (1995) by Justine Ettler, Eat Me (1996) by Linda Jaivin, Camille’s Bread (1996) by Amanda Lohrey, Steam Pigs (1997) by Melissa Lucashenko, The Pillow Fight (1998) by Matthew Condon, Pants on Fire (2000) by Maggie Alderson, The Architect (2000) by Jillian Watkinson, The Bride Stripped Bare (2003) by Nikki Gemmell, Taming the Beast (2004) by Emily Maguire, Rohypnol (2007) by Andrew Hutchinson, Fiona McGregor’s Indelible Ink (2010), Josephine Rowe’s short story collection How a Moth Becomes a Boat (2010) and Krissy Kneen’s collection Triptych (2011), as well as the short stories “Victoria Shepworth’s Big Night Out” by Jessica Adams and Rachel Treasure’s “From Tarot to Tractors” from the Girls’ Night In collection (2010), edited by Jessica Adams.
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Robb, Simon. "Fictocritical sentences." 2001, 2001. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phr631.pdf.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-168). CD-ROMs comprise: Appendix A. Family values: fictocritical sentences -- appendix C. Reforming the boy: fictocritical sentences Primarily enacts a fictocritical mapping of local cultural events essentially concerned with crime and trauma in Adelaide. The fictocritical treatment of these events simulates their unresolved or traumatised condition. A secondary concern is the relationship between electronic writing (hypertext) and fictocriticism.
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Liu, Yuanhang. "Reifungsromane vis-à-vis Social Novels about Older Women: A Comparative Study on Fiction about Female Ageing in Contemporary Australian and Chinese Literature." Thesis, Curtin University, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80628.
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This study focuses on fiction about female ageing since the 1970s as an important literary genre. By conducting a cross-cultural comparison based on the close-reading of the primary texts of two recent literary genres – Reifungsromane in the Australian context and Social Novels about Older Women in the Chinese context – this study contributes to the deeper understanding of female ageing experiences represented in contemporary literature.
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Cruz, Talita Mochiute. "A ficção australiana de J. M. Coetzee: o romance autorreflexivo contemporâneo." Universidade de São Paulo, 2015. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8151/tde-10092015-160114/.
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Esta dissertação propõe uma leitura da chamada ficção australiana de J. M. Coetzee composta por Elizabeth Costello (2003), Homem lento (2005) e Diário de um ano ruim (2007). Esses romances da fase madura do autor compartilham um núcleo de questões estéticas e éticas, configurando um conjunto significativo marcado pela inflexão autorreflexiva. O trabalho acompanha a constituição e a trajetória dos escritores-personagens Elizabeth Costello e Señor C, discutindo como a inserção do recurso do duplo do escritor desestabiliza as noções de autor, personagem e narrador, além de borrar os limites entre ficção e não ficção. A dramatização do processo criativo no centro das obras é outro foco da análise, com o objetivo de entender a encenação da impossibilidade do romance nos moldes do realismo formal. O estudo ainda tenta sugerir a resposta de Coetzee sobre a validade do romance no mundo contemporâneo.This dissertation presents a reading of J. M. Coetzees so-called Australian fiction comprising the works Elizabeth Costello (2003), Slow Man (2005), and Diary of a Bad Year (2007). These novels, belonging to the authors late prose, share core aesthetic and ethical issues. They are meaningful works characterized by self-reflexive inflection. This study follows Elizabeth Costello and Señor C in their writer-characters constitution and journey to discuss how the presence of the writers double, as literary device, destabilizes the notions of author, character, and narrator, as well as it blurs the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The dramatization of the creative process in the center of Coetzees works is another focus of analysis aiming to understand the impossibility of staging the novel in formal realism patterns. This work also attempts to suggest Coetzees response on the validity of the novel in the contemporary world.
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Truter, Victoria Zea. "Dreamscape and death : an analysis of three contemporary novels and a film." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012976.
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With its focus on the relationship between dreamscape and death, this study examines the possibility of indirectly experiencing – through writing and dreaming – that which cannot be directly experienced, namely death. In considering this possibility, the thesis engages at length with Maurice Blanchot's argument that death, being irrevocably absent and therefore unknowable, is not open to presentation or representation. After explicating certain of this thinker's theories on the ambiguous nature of literary and oneiric representation, and on the forfeiture of subjective agency that occurs in the moments of writing and dreaming, the study turns to an examination of the manner in which such issues are dealt with in selected dreamscapes. With reference to David Malouf's An Imaginary Life, Alan Warner's These Demented Lands, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and Richard Linklater's Waking Life, the thesis explores the literary and cinematic representation of human attempts to define, resist, or control death through dreaming and writing about it. Ultimately, the study concludes that such attempts are necessarily inconclusive, and that it is only ever possible to represent death as a (mis)representation.
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Cain, Lara Anne. "Reading Culture : the translation and transfer of Australianness in contemporary fiction." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2001. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/15785/1/Lara_Cain_Thesis.pdf.
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The dual usage of 'reading' in the title evokes the nature of this study. This thesis will analyse the ways in which people 'read' (make sense of/produce) images of culture as they approach translated novels. Part of this analysis is the examination of what informs the 'reading culture' of a given community; that is, the conditions in which readers and texts exist, or the ways in which readers are able to access texts. Understanding of the depictions of culture found in a novel is influenced by publicity and promotion, educational institutions, book stores, funding bodies and other links between the reading public and the production and sale of books. All of these parties act as 'translators' of the text, making it available and comprehensible to readers. This thesis will make use of a set of contemporary Australian novels, each of which makes extensive use of Australianness and Australianisms throughout its narrative. The movement of these texts from their cultures of origin towards wider Australia, the United Kingdom and France will provide the major case studies. The thesis will assert that no text is accessed without some form of translation and that the reading positions established by translators are a powerful influence on the interpretations arrived at by readers. More than ever, in the contemporary reading environment, the influence of the press and other 'translators' is significant to the ways in which texts are read, and to perceptions held by readers of the culture from which a novel originates.
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Cain, Lara Anne. "Reading Culture: the translation and transfer of Australianness in contemporary fiction." Queensland University of Technology, 2001. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15785/.
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The dual usage of &171;reading&171; in the title evokes the nature of this study. This thesis will analyse the ways in which people &171;reading&171; (make sense of/produce) images of culture as they approach translated novels. Part of this analysis is the examination of what informs the &171;reading culture&171; of a given community; that is, the conditions in which readers and texts exist, or the ways in which readers are able to access texts. Understanding of the depictions of culture found in a novel is influenced by publicity and promotion, educational institutions, book stores, funding bodies and other links between the reading public and the production and sale of books. All of these parties act as &171;translators&171; of the text, making it available and comprehensible to readers. This thesis will make use of a set of contemporary Australian novels, each of which makes extensive use of Australianness and Australianisms throughout its narrative. The movement of these texts from their cultures of origin towards wider Australia, the United Kingdom and France will provide the major case studies. The thesis will assert that no text is accessed without some form of translation and that the reading positions established by translators are a powerful influence on the interpretations arrived at by readers. More than ever, in the contemporary reading environment, the influence of the press and other &171;translators&171; is significant to the ways in which texts are read, and to perceptions held by readers of the culture from which a novel originates.
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Staniforth, Martin John. "Re-imagining the convicts : history, myth and nation in contemporary Australian fictions of early convictism." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2015. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/10463/.
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This thesis examines the way in which a number of contemporary Australian novels use the contested figure of the early convict to reflect on, and participate in, the recent heated debates over Australian history and culture. It argues that while these novels represent an attempt to challenge the traditional narrative of the nation’s past promulgated by the Anglo-Celtic settler population, they predominantly reproduce rather than overturn the myths and stories that have been the hallmark of settler Australia. I examine the novels in three overlapping contexts: in relation to the way in which Australia’s convict history has shaped and influenced contemporary perceptions of nation and belonging; in relation to the tradition of convict fiction from Marcus Clarke onwards; and in relation to contemporary debates about Australian identity and history. I start with two contextual chapters: the first considers the foundational role of early convictism in creating the myths and stories that Anglo-Celtic Australians use to order their lives and how the convict legacy has left its mark on contemporary Australian society; the second examines the way in which early convict fiction established key aspects of settler history and identity, before considering how the genre of convict fiction responded to challenges to the nature of Australian society in the 1960s and 1970s. I then go on to examine critically the response of contemporary convict novels to the more fundamental challenges to traditional representations of Australian history and identity posed in the period immediately following the Bicentenary of British settlement, considering them in the contexts of Aboriginal dispossession, myths of exile and settler relationships to the land. I conclude that while these novels seek to reconceptualize the past they mostly fail to imagine an alternative vision for the country and consequently endorse rather than undermine the narratives they seek to challenge.
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Holliday, Penny. "The shifting city : a study of contemporary fictional representations Of Melbourne's inner and outer suburban spaces." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2017. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/103101/4/Penelope_Holliday_Thesis.pdf.
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This project explores the complexity of Melbourne’s inner and outer suburban spaces as portrayed within contemporary Melbourne fiction. The study is a textual analysis of the works of several Melbourne writers whose writings feature their city’s suburbs as significant sites in the exploration of the relationship between identity and place. I argue that Melbourne, as a city of suburbs, is a paradigm worthy of writerly and critical attention. The fictional texts are Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap (2008), Sonya Hartnett’s Butterfly (2009), Steven Carroll’s novel The Time We Have Taken (2007) and Wayne Macauley’s novel Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe (2004).
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Dagg, Samantha. "Still digging: from grunge to post-grunge in Australian fiction." Thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1342404.
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Masters Research - Master of Philosophy (MPhil)The Minimum of Getting By is a collection of short fiction in the dirty realist style, set in the urban environment of contemporary Australia. The collection centres on the inner lives of a cast of marginalised characters, all of whom are stuck in some way – in bad relationships, in self-destructive patterns, in the past, in their own heads. There is rarely much in the way of narrative action but, when it does occur, it is often cyclic, returning the characters emotionally, if not physically, to the same place from which they began. The manuscript draws inspiration from the Australian grunge fiction of the 1990s, utilising many of its techniques, including its inner-city settings, its minimal narratives, its emotional bleakness and sometimes-autobiographical/always-confessional tone. Far from merely replicating grunge fiction, however, I have attempted to create a type of ‘post-grunge’ literature by critically engaging with the themes and archetypes of grunge, and reinventing them in a contemporary setting. In the accompanying exegesis, ‘Digging in the Dirt’, I look at the original grunge fiction as well as proposing ‘post-grunge’, a current movement in Australian writing to which the creative manuscript belongs. In the first section of the exegesis, I provide a brief overview of the grunge lit phenomenon of the 1990s, isolating a number of the key techniques and tropes of the genre, including the gritty urban setting; the linear narrative; the ‘confessional I’ narrator; the assumption of autobiographical content; the subcultural affiliations; and, finally, the ‘disrupted individual’ archetype, and its gendered archetypes, the ‘transient female’ and ‘static male’. In the second section, I discuss the work of Kalinda Ashton and Luke Carman in terms of a post-grunge framework, looking at the differing ways both authors have interpreted and reinvented ‘grunge’ in their own writing, with particular emphasis on the archetypes of the ‘post-grunge male’ and the ‘static female’. I also place my own manuscript within this framework, discussing the individual stories in terms of their differing relationships to a grunge and post-grunge style of literatures.
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Collier, Stella Catherine Juliet. "'Long strange ride' & The lure of the road in contemporary Australian fiction." Thesis, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10453/43434.
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University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.NO FULL TEXT AVAILABLE. Access is restricted indefinitely. The hardcopy may be available for consultation at the UTS Library.
The journey is an age-old literary device and its contemporary manifestation, the road story, is more commonly told through the medium of cinema. Can such a clichéd narrative structure tell us anything new? What makes an Australian road novel uniquely Australian and can it ever be more than a pale imitation of its American counterparts? The creative portion of my Master of Creative Arts thesis consists of the first two parts of a projected three-part road novel, Long Strange Ride. Set in Australia around the time of the Port Arthur massacre, the novel is narrated by 26 year-old Kaz, an inner-west lesbian working in a bar. In Part One, at her mother’s funeral Kaz meets her estranged father and his six-year old daughter Kiera. Over the next few months the two half-sisters become friends and when Kiera arrives one day with a broken arm, Kaz decides to take her away from her parents. They set out on a road trip that leads them to Broken Hill, where they find shelter with an old friend. In Part Two Kaz tells the story of Holly, her other little sister, whose unhappy life and teenage death she blames on their father and on herself; her story has cast a shadow over Kaz’s life and Kiera’s arrival has transformed Kaz’s guilt into action. In Part Three (which has not been submitted for examination) their father and the police arrive in Broken Hill and Kaz continues to hide with Kiera, heading ultimately to confrontation and a choice she must make between violence and forgiveness. The exegesis, The Lure of the Road in Contemporary Australian Fiction, examines three Australian road novels (Last Ride by Denise Young, Floundering by Romy Ash and The Low Road by Chris Womersley) and seeks to establish whether this sub-genre of contemporary fiction can be considered uniquely Australian. It engages with the key themes that emerged in the writing of Long Strange Ride that are also defining features of the three texts – the mythology of place, gender, family and social marginalisation. The critical stance is informed by the available critical literature, the most significant of these being Delia Falconer’s work on Australian road writing. It also refers to the complex and wide-ranging discussion of place and Australian national identity, drawing upon the work of Roslyn Haynes, Ross Gibson and Don Watson and showing how these three texts reflect the contradictions at the heart of Australian national mythology. While the figure of the bushman on the land is idealized, the landscape itself is demonized, perpetuating the theme of the hostile wilderness. Assessing the damaging impact of the journey upon the characters and their relationships, I argue that the lure of the road is deceptive and that the road itself is dangerous and untrustworthy. This negative characterization of the road implies a parallel affirmation of everything that the road is not – home, the feminine, family, nurture, society and belonging. In its characterization of the road and the landscape, the Australian road novel provides a distinctive narrative that privileges home over the empty promise of the journey and an encounter with a hostile land.
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Lynn, Jenna-Lee Delle. "Negotiating dark matter: trauma and ecology in the fiction of contemporary Australian women writers." Thesis, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1407778.
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Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)This thesis examines Janette Turner Hospital’s novels within the context of sites and expressions of trauma: locally, nationally and globally. Its focus is on rereading representations of trauma that destabilise dominant discourses about memory, place, nationality, community and gender. This dissertation also argues for a new interpretative paradigm for reading texts that deal with trauma and proposes a lens comprising eco-feminism and trauma theory. The framework I have created explores the phenomenon of trauma in literature as one of the defining features of human nature that shapes our ecological ontologies. Reading Turner Hospital’s fiction through a colloquy of trauma theory and eco-feminism shows how sites of wounding, embodied in land, the human form, art and music, can be reimagined to acknowledge the personal and cultural significance of working through pain. Using traumatic sites of national and global significance in Turner Hospital’s work also invites a reconsideration of trauma theory through examining different modes of hearing about and engaging with wounding to actualise bodily and psychic restoration. The major focus of my research is on the ways that eco-critical concerns interact with trauma and how this approach to reading Australian women’s fiction provides deeper understanding of trauma’s impact, both at the literal and metaphysical levels of experience. A case study of selected texts from Turner Hospital’s collection of writing will be used in conjunction with Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and Lily Brett’s Too Many Men to examine how trauma affects Australia’s immigrant culture, mobilises the dispossession of its Indigenous people and speaks to discourses that are of international concern, including Australia’s vulnerability to the threat of international terrorism and the ways we respond to situations that violate basic human rights. The selection of Australian texts written by women provides a rich context for examining ongoing personal, national and global issues that underpin trauma.
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Lovat, Amy Terese. "Halfway to nowhere: liminal female journeys as "coming of awareness" in contemporary Australian fiction." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1322136.
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Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)This thesis contains a novella, Halfway to Nowhere, and an accompanying exegesis. Halfway to Nowhere: Liminal Female Journeys as “Coming of Awareness” in Contemporary Australian Fiction is an exegetical response to the creative artefact that draws on literary theory, close reading of texts, and self-reflexive questioning to understand how the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood is represented in examples of contemporary Australian fiction. I align myself with my protagonist, El, as caught between two recognised life stages, and use autoethnographic honesty and experiential knowledge as an integral narrative thread. Using Halfway to Nowhere and four contemporary Australian works of fiction, this exegesis reappropriates the coming of age to a “coming of awareness” that is defined by several moments of transition, realisation, or epiphany. I posit that contemporaneous narration to focus the present moment, and open-ended narrative, are effective techniques for demonstrating the ongoing process of self-creation. Halfway to Nowhere is a coming-of-awareness story in a time when a search for identity isn’t limited to high school, puberty, and teenagehood. Rather than a Young Adult fiction novel or a bildungsroman text, Halfway to Nowhere is an experimental narrative about a 20-something female character straddling adolescence and adulthood, on a journey of self-discovery in her particular time and space. In leaving the ending of my novella open, I have hoped to transcend a traditionally linear narrative arc and allow readers to interpret the story through their own lens of understanding. I also hope that the experimental, self-conscious narration of Halfway to Nowhere offers the reader opportunity to reflect on their own transition to adulthood, as I have done throughout the exegesis.
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Gabriel, Matthew. "Deterrence vivarium: a collection of stories and exegesis." Thesis, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/105381.
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The thesis Deterrence Vivarium is made up of a creative component and an exegesis. The creative component is a collection of eight pieces of fiction ranging in style and length, from microfictions to short stories and concluding with a novella. The opening story “Amsterdam” begins with the protagonist attempting to deal with the disintegration and loss of a relationship. The world around them reflects this sense of decay and the central character’s helplessness in taking control in a world whose threat encroaches upon his very perception of the physical space around him. The story “ONFF” follows on by inviting the reader into the narrator’s willful misperception of the world around them, using a room in his parent’s house to teach found electronic objects a new way of thinking and being. “jesussaves82” is an online date gone wrong. Both participants are more concerned with the idea of connecting with another person, rather than thinking about who that person may be. With one of them acting like Jesus, it is bound to fail. “The Suitcase” is a story of memory in which the disappearance of a father and the finding of an old man with Alzheimer’s on the street coincide for a mother and child. “Deterrence Vivarium”, the title piece, looks at the method a couple on the cusp of retirement take to eradicate a series of older selves that are scaling their back wall and making camp in their yard. “To My Son” is an epistolary short story in which a father leaves a beautifying face brace patent for what he sees and declares is his ugly son. He hopes it will redeem with wealth his failure as a father so far. “Imago” finds the central character turned into a copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis in the bedroom of a woman who took him home in a failed one-night stand. The final piece, “By Numbers”, is a novella that follows Callum Ryder, a man who has left his job for no particular reason beyond his dislike for his work. He redeems an offer for a free cosmetic procedure he found in his spam folder and finds himself entwined in the madness of Doctor Hensen and his elusive partner in their activities. The exegetical component acts as a critical map of the influences and motivations that are embedded in the creative process of the collection’s construction. It traces the relation of these pieces to a broader context, including the textual, the conceptual and social. It looks at the role and relationship of the exegesis and its purpose. And finally, draws out specific aspects of the writing as a collection, from its humor to its underlying concerns, and argues that in spite of the limits and breakdown of communication and language that are reflected in these stories, there is in turn a vital need to attempt to move towards empathy and understanding.Thesis (M.Phil.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2017.
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Davidson, Kristy Lee. "Is that what you’re wearing? Gender diversity in contemporary fiction, a novel and exegesis." Thesis, 2012. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/21487/.
Full textAbstract:
The methods of production of gender diverse characters within mainstream literary texts
are an under-researched area from a creative writing standpoint. Is That What You’re
Wearing? Gender Diversity in Contemporary Fiction, A Novel and Exegesis is a
creative writing doctoral thesis which critically interrogates the signifiers and tropes that
are employed to produce gender diversity in contemporary fiction, and their effects and
impacts. The exegesis, Gender Diversity in Contemporary Fiction, contextualises the
theoretical ground concerning gender diversity. It critically explores issues of cultural
and material access to literary works featuring gender diverse protagonists. In addition,
it compares and contrasts the production of gender diversity in three contemporary
novels: Chris Bohjalian’s (2000) Trans-sister Radio; Jeffrey Eugenides’ (2002b)
Middlesex; and Ali Smith’s (2007) Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis. Most
significantly it discusses the manner in which these two aspects inform my creative
writing practice in the novel Is That What You’re Wearing? The exegesis argues that
creative writers require an increased awareness of issues of representation when writing
about marginalised groups, such as gender diverse individuals, to avoid perpetuating
problematic and commonly used representations that otherwise sustain their
marginalisation in society. The novel, which features three gender diverse characters, is
the practical outcome of this critical theoretical research. As per the requirements for
Victoria University creative writing theses, the creative component forms 67 per cent of
the thesis, and the critical exegesis, 33 per cent. The preferred reading order for the
thesis is the novel (Volume One), then the exegesis (Volume Two).
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Flanagan, Willanski Cassie. "Here where we live: the evolution of contemporary white Australian writers’ responses to white settler status." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/85506.
Full textAbstract:
It is proposed that Australians of white settler heritage writing on the subject of Indigenous Australians in the period from the early 20th Century to the present day take a combination of three common approaches. The “haunted”, “contemporary representations” and “stepping back” approaches represent an evolving attitude in contemporary white Australian writing on Indigenous themes. This evolution occurs in a rough chronological order, however within this chronology the writing may exhibit a fluidity, moving back and forth between the three approaches. Texts by Patrick White and Judith Wright are used as primary examples of the three approaches, with secondary examples given from a range of contemporary white Australian writers. The evolution of Indigenous Australian writing is discussed within the “stepping back” approach. Parallels are drawn between the evolution of white and Indigenous Australian writing on Indigenous themes, with the argument that Indigenous writing displays both the “haunted” and “contemporary representations” approaches. The final approach for Indigenous Australian writers, however, is the “stepping forward” approach. The poetry of Kath Walker/Oodgeroo Noonuccal is the principal example given to illustrate this section, with additional commentary on a range of contemporary Indigenous Australian writing. Examples of the three approaches’ influence on the creative component of this thesis are discussed throughout the exegesis.Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2012
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Dalley, Hamish. "Postcolonialism and the historical novel : allegorical realism and contemporary literature of the past in Nigeria, Australia and New Zealand." Phd thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/155168.
Full textAbstract:
The historical novel is one of the most prominent modes of contemporary writing in the former British Empire, yet the genre's postcolonial variant has not been the subject of critical analysis in its own right. This neglect can be explained by the dominance of a "resistance paradigm" in postcolonial studies, which tends to equate realism with naive mimesis and thus treats the historical novel as either a vehicle for imperialist ideology or a site of discursive conflict over the meaning of the past. As a result, the genre's epistemological and aesthetic complexities have been marginalised. This thesis responds to this neglect by critically analysing examples of the historical novel published since 2000 in Nigeria, Australia, and New Zealand. Historicised close analysis reveals that notwithstanding the anti-mimetic presumptions of much contemporary postcolonial criticism, and despite differences arising from contextual particularities, these texts are shaped by a common "realist impulse" that frames their narratives as defensible interpretations of the past. This ethical obligation to evidence-based interpretation has formal and epistemological consequences that manifest in an aesthetic framework I call allegorical realism. This term names a mode of representation in which fictional elements oscillate between ontological and conceptual registers in ways that simultaneously produce empathetically-unsettling relations to imagined individuals and interpretations of macro-historical change. This combination of affect and abstraction defines the genre as one based neither around assumptions about the transparency of language, nor overly pessimistic views that knowledge of the past is unachievable. I show that focusing analysis on allegorical realism allows critical attention to move away from its exclusive concern with textual resistance and instead explore how the genre is inflected by the various narratives it mediates and the specificities of postcolonial contexts. This research identifies three main variants of the contemporary postcolonial historical novel, each characterised by a different modulation of allegorical realism. Settler allegory comprises texts like Kate Grenville's The Secret River (2005) and Fiona Kidman's The Captive Wife (2006), in which colonists' alienation from occupied territory is reflected formally in the undercutting of allegorical procedures that align imaginary characters with their settings. Transnational historical novels, by contrast, stretch the spatio-temporal coordinates of allegorical realism to encompass processes taking place in global settings. This generates aesthetic effects that link apparently dissimilar novels like Witi Ihimaera's The Trowenna Sea (2009) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Finally, melancholy realism describes texts like Chris Abani's Song for Night (2007) and Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish (2001)-texts which disrupt the boundaries between past and present to unsettle postcolonial complacency. Tracing allegorical realism across these modes reveals how postcolonial concerns continue to recreate the genre, and how the oscillation of the allegorical signifier can challenge dominant accounts of historical change. The genre provides a significant archive for exploring how postcolonial literature is characterised by disjunctive temporalities irreducible to dominant narratives of modernity, while nonetheless being shaped by processes that link the globalised world.
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Atherfold, Joanna. "Watermark: a short story cycle." Thesis, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1309822.
Full textAbstract:
Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Watermark is a short story cycle exploring intergenerational and personal relationships in coastal communities. The stories observe the complexity of characters drawn together, but also separated, by family, topography and circumstance. Written to reflect experiences from the 1960s through to present times, the stories reveal individuals responding to the uncertainty and disorder of life-changing events and unexpected revelations. Located in a quintessentially Australian landscape, the characters transgress physical and metaphorical boundaries and experience pivotal moments of transformation, even if – and, as it will be argued, because – those times are fleeting or unsustainable. The stories oscillate between their autonomous status and their interconnection within the broader narrative framework of the short story cycle. This structural aesthetic enables continuity through recurring characters, settings and themes. Paradoxically, these elements combine to reflect fractured relationships and unstable characters against a backdrop that is constantly changing. The exegesis draws on the notion of liminality to explore the generic and thematic concerns that emerged during the composition of the stories, particularly in relation to the oppositions and paradoxes evinced above. It looks at the complexities and challenges of the short story cycle with close reference to three short story cycles with coastal settings – The Bodysurfers by Robert Drewe, The Turning by Tim Winton and Having Cried Wolf by Gretchen Shirm. These texts reveal that Australian short story writers regard the coastline as more than simply a setting; it is a place of transition and a viable site to explore character development and transformation.
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Muirden, Sallie. "We too shall be mothers : her story, our story, history: feminism and postmodernism in the contemporary historical novel." Thesis, 2001. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/18195/.
Full textAbstract:
This Master of Arts thesis is in two parts : a novel, We Too Shall Be Mothers,
(WTSBM) and an exegesis which positions the novel in relation to several
strands of contemporary theory and fiction. The novel is set during the French
Revolution in the southern French city of Avignon and in Vienna, the capital of
the Hapsburg Empire. WTSBM tells the story of a fictional nun, Marie-France,
who leaves her Carmelite convent and embarks on a journey towards
motherhood and fully sexualised adulthood.
The exegesis contains three main strands of theorisation. First, it illustrates
the profound influence of feminist psychoanalytic theory on WTSBM, but also
argues that the novel reformulates and departs from specific aspects of the
feminist psychoanalytic paradigm. Second, the exegesis argues that WTSBM can
be classified as a 'postmodernist, revisionist, historical novel', which can be
positioned alongside other postmodernist, historical literature. Third, the
exegesis argues that WTSBM can be located within contemporary issues of
feminist politics, particularly issues of gender, sexuality and relationship, which
are also evident in Jeanette Winterson's The Passion (1987).
The research material for this thesis has come from a range of sources.
Primary sources include field visits to the European cities of Avignon and
Vienna. Secondary sources include literary theory, novels, and newspaper
reviews, as well as historical monographs and works of religious philosophy and
autobiography.
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Garretson, Anna. "Unsettling fictions : contemporary white writing from South Africa and Australia." Phd thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/151206.
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Farca, Paula Anca. "Roots to routes contemporary indigenous fiction by women writers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand /." 2009. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/etd/Farca_okstate_0664D_10631.pdf.
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