Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'David Malouf'

This thesis develops a critical reading methodology entitled unprincipled formalism. This methodology is tested in close readings of three relatively contemporary Australian literary texts: David Malouf's short story "A Traveller's Tale" (1986) and novella Remembering Babylon (1994), and Peter Carey's short story "The Chance" (1978). Unprincipled formalism is developed in relation to three broad contexts: the fragmented state of the contemporary discipline of literary studies; the complex of international economic and social phenomena which goes under the general rubric of globalisation; and the specific Australian left-liberal literary critical tradition which I have termed, for convenience sake, the Meanjin literary formation. Unprincipled formalism does not draw a distinction between form and content. Unprincipled formalism is a critical methodology that is both avowedly socially concerned and strictly formalist. It is concerned with articulating and analysing the particular social and political interventions made by literary texts (as well as the resultant critical discussion of those texts) through a consideration of the formal techniques by which literary texts situate themselves as acts of communication. Principal among these techniques is the mise en abyme. The thesis provides a detailed analysis of debates around the mise en abyme informed by the work of theorists such as Ross Chambers, Lucien Dallenbach, Frank Lentricchia, Moshe Ron, Jacques Derrida and others. Politically, unprincipled formalism attempts to steer a middling course between neo-liberal triumphalism on the one hand and nostalgic left romanticism on the other. This involves on the one hand a critique of neo-liberalism drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, Stephen Holmes, John Frow and others, and on the other a critique of a nostalgic romantic tendency in "progressive" critical technologies such as postmodern and postcolonial literary studies.

This thesis develops a critical reading methodology entitled unprincipled formalism. This methodology is tested in close readings of three relatively contemporary Australian literary texts: David Malouf's short story "A Traveller's Tale" (1986) and novella Remembering Babylon (1994), and Peter Carey's short story "The Chance" (1978). Unprincipled formalism is developed in relation to three broad contexts: the fragmented state of the contemporary discipline of literary studies; the complex of international economic and social phenomena which goes under the general rubric of globalisation; and the specific Australian left-liberal literary critical tradition which I have termed, for convenience sake, the Meanjin literary formation. Unprincipled formalism does not draw a distinction between form and content. Unprincipled formalism is a critical methodology that is both avowedly socially concerned and strictly formalist. It is concerned with articulating and analysing the particular social and political interventions made by literary texts (as well as the resultant critical discussion of those texts) through a consideration of the formal techniques by which literary texts situate themselves as acts of communication. Principal among these techniques is the mise en abyme. The thesis provides a detailed analysis of debates around the mise en abyme informed by the work of theorists such as Ross Chambers, Lucien Dallenbach, Frank Lentricchia, Moshe Ron, Jacques Derrida and others. Politically, unprincipled formalism attempts to steer a middling course between neo-liberal triumphalism on the one hand and nostalgic left romanticism on the other. This involves on the one hand a critique of neo-liberalism drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, Stephen Holmes, John Frow and others, and on the other a critique of a nostalgic romantic tendency in "progressive" critical technologies such as postmodern and postcolonial literary studies.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Humanities
Full Text

The aim of this thesis is to assess David Malouf’s contribution to the field of gender and men studies in his fiction books. In order to do so, I have proceeded by offering a close reading of each of his novels so as to emphasise those parts of the plot where gender and masculinities are more relevant, and from here engaging in a series of theoretical discourses as I saw convenient in the course of my analysis. We read his largely autobiographical novel Johnno in the tradition of the Bildungsroman. In this tradition, the main characters fulfil themselves when they meet the roles that society expects of them. Therefore, becoming a man or a woman means meeting these expectations. In Johnno, Malouf offers an alternative form of successful socialisation that redeems the main character, Dante as an artist but is also built on personal tragedy. We use Judith Butler’s studies on the performativity of gender, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva’s ècriture feminine and their distinction between symbolic and semiotic language, Eve K. Sedgwick and René Girard’s studies on homosocial desire and triangulation, and Simone the Beauvoir and Pierre Bourdieu’s ethnographic research on women and Kabyle society, respectively, to read An Imaginary Life and Harland’s Half Acre. In An Imaginary Life, Malouf fictionalises the life of the poet Ovid in exile. In Rome, Ovid defies patriarchy and the Emperor writing a poetry that is uncivil and gay. In his exile in Tomis, Ovid decides to raise a feral Child against the advice of the women in the village, who end up using their power, based on folklore and superstition, to get rid of them. In Harland’s Half Acre, Malouf creates a male household where women are mostly absent, and a female one where the women are the main actors and men play a secondary role. When the main character of the novel, Frank Harland, finally recovers the family estate for his family’s only descendant, his nephew Gerald, the latter commits suicide. One of Malouf’s main concerns in his writings, the outcome of the novels privilege a spiritual sort of possession over one based on the values of patriarchy, that is, bloodline succession by right of the first-born male child, hierarchical power relations and ownership: Ovid survives in his poems thanks to the human need for magic and superstition, and so does Frank in his art. Michael S. Kimmel and R. W. Connell’s studies on men and masculinities, and historical research on Australian identity as it was forged during the colonial period and the World Wars help us read Fly Away Peter, The Great World, Remembering Babylon and The Conversations at Curlow Creek. In Australia, national identity and definitions of manhood are closely tied to frontier and war masculinities. In these novels, Malouf portrays the Australian legend: sceptical of authority, easy-going, egalitarian, larrikin, resourceful, etc. Unfortunately, the legend had a destructive effect on women and the feminine, and that is the reason why we recover from oblivion the important role that women played in the construction of Australia. Edward Said’s research in Culture and Imperialism, Homi Bhabha’s notions of hybridity and mimicry, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness provide us valuable tools to analyse class and ethnic issues when we ask ourselves what it means to be a man in Remembering Babylon. Margaret M. Gullette’s studies on the representation of age bias in literature and Ashton Applewhite’s research against ageism provide the theoretical framework for Ransom, where Malouf tells the story of Priam’s ransom of his son Hector, urging us to wonder what kind of heroism is left to a man in his old age. Finally, we offer a close reading of the outcome of the novels, where the agents of transformation are always male or involve male characters: Dante and Johnno, the eponymous hero of the novel; the Child in An Imaginary Life; Digger and Vic in The Great World; Gemmy in Remembering Babylon or Priam and Achilles in Ransom. In this way, we hope to better understand and more clearly render the world of men that Malouf portrays in his novels.
L’objectiu de la tesi és valorar la contribució de les obres de ficció de David Malouf als estudis de gènere i de masculinitats. Per tal d’aconseguir-ho, hem dut a terme una lectura fidel de les seves novel·les tot emfasitzant aquells elements de la història on el gènere i les masculinitats són més rellevants, i a partir d’aquí hem emprat una sèrie de teories que consideràvem adients en la nostra anàlisi. Hem llegit la seva novel·la àmpliament autobiogràfica, Johnno en la tradició de la Bildungsroman. En aquesta tradició, els personatges principals es realitzen quan compleixen les expectatives que la societat espera d’ells. Així doncs, fer-se un home o una dona vol dir complir aquestes expectatives. A Johnno, Malouf ens dóna una forma alternativa de socialització exitosa que redimeix al personatge principal, Dante, però que també s’erigeix sobre una tragèdia personal. Emprem la recerca de Judith Butler sobre la “performativitat” del gènere, l’ècriture feminine d’Hélène Cixous i Julia Kristeva i la distinció que fan entre llenguatge semiòtic i simbòlic, els estudis de Eve K. Sedgwick i René Girard sobre desig homosocial i el triangle amorós, i la recerca etnogràfica de Simone the Beauvoir i Pierre Bourdieu sobre la dona I la societat Kabyle, respectivament, en la nostra anàlisi d’An Imaginary Life i Harland’s Half Acre. A An Imaginary Life, Malouf narra la vida del poeta Ovidi a l’exili. A Roma, Ovidi desafia el patriarcat escrivint una poesia que és impertinent i divertida. Al seu exili a Tomis, Ovidi decideix criar un nen salvatge, contradient el consell de les dones del poble, que acaben utilitzant el seu poder, basat en les tradicions populars i la superstició, per lliurar-se’n. A Harland’s Half Acre, Malouf crea una llar principalment masculina on les dones hi són absents, i una de femenina on les dones porten les rendes de la casa i els homes hi tenen un paper secundari. Quan el personatge principal de la novel·la, Frank Harland, finalment recupera l’herència de la seva família i la vol entregar a l’únic descendent que queda de la família, el seu nebot Gerald, aquest es suïcida. Un dels temes més recurrents a les novel·les de David Malouf, el desenllaç de les novel·les privilegien una possessió de tipus espiritual per damunt d’una possessió basada en els valors del patriarcat, és a dir, la descendència basada en els fills legítims o de sang i els privilegis del fill primogènit, relacions jeràrquiques de poder i la propietat. Emprem els estudis sobre homes i masculinitats de Michael S. Kimmel i R. W. Connell, la recerca històrica de la identitat Australiana tal com es va forjar durant el període colonial i les dues Guerres Mundials en la nostra anàlisi de Fly Away Peter, The Great World, Remembering Babylon i The Conversations at Curlow Creek. A Austràlia, la identitat nacional i les definicions de masculinitat estan estretament lligades a les masculinitats de fronteres i de guerra. En aquestes novel·les, Malouf representa la llegenda del típic Australià: escèptic de l’autoritat, relaxat, igualitari, malparlat, informal, amb recursos, etc. Malauradament, la llegenda va tenir un efecte molt destructiu en les dones i els valors femenins, i per això recuperem de l’oblit l’important paper que van jugar les dones en la construcció d’Austràlia. La recerca d’Edward Said a Culture and Imperialism, les nocions d’hibridització i mimetisme d’Homi Bhabha, i la novel·la Heart of Darkness, de Joseph Conrad, ens proporcionen eines valuoses per la nostra anàlisi de qüestions ètniques i de classe quan ens preguntem què vol dir ser home a Remembering Babylon. Els estudis de Margaret M. Gullette sobre els prejudicis de la representació de l’edat a la literatura, i la recerca d’Ashton Applewhite contra els prejudicis de l’edat, ens proporcionen el marc teòric de la nostra lectura de Ransom, on Malouf explica la història de Priam, que rescata el cos del seu fill Hèctor de les mans d’Aquil·les, tot preguntant-nos quin tipus d’heroisme li queda a un home quan es fa vell. Finalment, oferim una lectura atenta de la resolució de les novel·les, on els agents del canvi són sempre masculins o impliquen personatges masculins. Per exemple, Dante i Johnno, l’heori epònim de la novel·la; el nen salvatge a An Imaginary Life; Digger i Vic a The Great World; Gemmy a Remembering Babylon o Priam i Achilles a Ransom. D’aquesta manera, esperem entendre millor i transmetre més clarament el món dels homes que Malouf ens representa a les seves novel·les.

Landscape is an enduring feature of Antipodean settler literature. Postcolonial fiction in New Zealand and Australia draws on pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial narratives of landscape to create compelling representations of place and people. In the adult fiction of New Zealand author Maurice Gee and Australian author David Malouf, characters typically turn to the landscape at moments of crisis or transition. Close analysis of Gee’s and Malouf’s fiction demonstrates that the physical environment serves as a touchstone for personal and national identity throughout personal and national histories. From childhood to old age, characters seek self-definition by locating themselves within their physical environment, rather than by directly referencing their social or cultural context. Individual life stages are shown to be analogous to early stages of national development for New Zealand and Australia – the journey from colonial child to mature identity for both the individual and the nation is figured through landscape images. However, Gee and Malouf also use the relationship between characters and landscape to reflect social attitudes and values, demonstrating a connection between confident identification with the ‘other’ of the landscape and the ability to integrate meaningfully with the ‘others’ of human society. Thus landscape functions in these texts as a means of both reflecting and constructing identity in postcolonial New Zealand and Australia.

Thesis (PhD--English)--University of Auckland, 2009.
"Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Doctor of Philosophy in English, the University of Auckland, 2009." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2009.
Title from title screen (viewed July 13, 2009) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2009; thesis submitted 2008. Includes appendices. Includes bibliography. Also available in print form.

This essay focuses on a postmodern reading of An Imaginary Life by David Malouf. It argues that language is a central theme in the novel and that Ovid’s transformation corresponds to his changing attitude towards different languages. According to Karin Hansson, Ovid’s transformation is divided into three stages. First, he longs for Latin, then he acquires Getic and in the end he seeks the languages of nature. The essay shows that stage two, Ovid’s acquisition of Getic, induces the deconstruction of the traditional high culture-low culture dichotomy in the novel. Language is understood as a representative of culture, and when Ovid considers Getic equal to Latin, the distinction between high culture and low culture collapses. Stage three, Ovid’s relationship with the wild child and his acquisition of the instinctive languages of nature, leads to the deconstruction of the animal-human dichotomy. The facts that the wild child transcends animality by gaining language and that Ovid wants to overcome human languages and immerse himself in nature promote a non-binary and multifaceted understanding of the human-animal relationship. To confirm its argument, the essay draws on Jacques Derrida’s ideas of language as well as his notions of the animal-human relationship.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the symbolism and meaning of the figure of the 'lost child' within the works of the two authors. My argument extends from the work of these authors to discuss the importance of the 'lost child' within Anglocentric culture and society. I will also discuss the authors' presentation of language as both restrictive and potentially transformative. My Introduction sets out the theoretical and historical associations of childhood with language and with memory. The modem conception of memory developed alongside modem concepts of childhood as a distinct state, separate from adulthood. The idea of a ' lost child' within the self implies a gap between past and present which is perhaps fundamental to fragmentations within individuals and society. The argument of this thesis begins from a broadly " physical" or material perspective, looking at the social and individual fragmentations surrounding the figure of the child, as represented specifically in short stories by Malouf and Frame. The stories discussed are most notable for their presentations of family trauma and social violence. I then discuss, through reference to the authors' life-writing, how writing is a "doubling" of the physical self and world. Following the theory of Derrida that '[d]eath strolls between letters' I argue that the figure of the lost child is an absent presence moving through the gap between signifier and signified. I develop the concept of death, along with silence, as essential to positive transformation of being and language respectively. acknowledging a beyond outside of signification. My thesis then proceeds from the analysis of how language restricts and categorises behaviour, to the ways Malouf and Frame advocate the power of the imagination and creativity to make the "gaps" - in life, in society, in the self - sites oftransfonnation .

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD)
This study investigates the poetic foundation of David Malouf’s poetry and prose published from 1960 to 1982. Its purpose is to extend reading strategies so that the nature of his poetic and its formative influence are more fully appreciated. Its thesis is that Malouf explores and tests with increasing confidence and daring a poetic imagination that he believes must meet the demands of the times. Malouf’s work is placed in relation to Wallace Stevens’ belief that the poetic imagination should “push back against the pressure of reality”, a view discussed by Seamus Heaney in “The Redress of Poetry”. The surprise of the poetic as “unpredicted aesthetic value” (García-Berrio, 1989) is significant to his purposes and techniques, as it creates idea-images and feeling-values (Jung, 1921) that bring together apparently opposite ways of knowing the world. In seeking to represent the meeting of inner and outer perceptions, Malouf’s work shows the influence not only of Stevens but also Rilke and contemporary American poetry of “deep image”. The Australian context of Malouf’s work is considered in relation to Judith Wright’s essay “The Writer and the Crisis” and the poetry of Malouf’s contemporaries. Details of the manuscript development of his first four novels show Malouf’s steps towards a clearer representation of his holistic, post-romantic vision. His correspondence with the poet Judith Rodriguez provides useful insights into his purposes. Theories and research about brain functions, the nature of intelligence and learning provide an important international context in the 1960s and 1970s, given Malouf’s interest in how meaning forms from perception and experience. Jean Piaget’s view of intelligence and David Kolb’s theory of experiential learning (1984) offer frameworks for reading Malouf that have not yet been considered. The thesis offers a model of poetic learning that highlights the interplay of dialectically opposed ways of forming meaning and points to the importance for Malouf of holding diverse states of mind together through the poetic imaginary.

This study investigates the poetic foundation of David Malouf’s poetry and prose published from 1960 to 1982. Its purpose is to extend reading strategies so that the nature of his poetic and its formative influence are more fully appreciated. Its thesis is that Malouf explores and tests with increasing confidence and daring a poetic imagination that he believes must meet the demands of the times. Malouf’s work is placed in relation to Wallace Stevens’ belief that the poetic imagination should “push back against the pressure of reality”, a view discussed by Seamus Heaney in “The Redress of Poetry”. The surprise of the poetic as “unpredicted aesthetic value” (García-Berrio, 1989) is significant to his purposes and techniques, as it creates idea-images and feeling-values (Jung, 1921) that bring together apparently opposite ways of knowing the world. In seeking to represent the meeting of inner and outer perceptions, Malouf’s work shows the influence not only of Stevens but also Rilke and contemporary American poetry of “deep image”. The Australian context of Malouf’s work is considered in relation to Judith Wright’s essay “The Writer and the Crisis” and the poetry of Malouf’s contemporaries. Details of the manuscript development of his first four novels show Malouf’s steps towards a clearer representation of his holistic, post-romantic vision. His correspondence with the poet Judith Rodriguez provides useful insights into his purposes. Theories and research about brain functions, the nature of intelligence and learning provide an important international context in the 1960s and 1970s, given Malouf’s interest in how meaning forms from perception and experience. Jean Piaget’s view of intelligence and David Kolb’s theory of experiential learning (1984) offer frameworks for reading Malouf that have not yet been considered. The thesis offers a model of poetic learning that highlights the interplay of dialectically opposed ways of forming meaning and points to the importance for Malouf of holding diverse states of mind together through the poetic imaginary.

This essay explores the representation of nonhuman nature in David Malouf’s postcolonial novel Remembering Babylon. By applying a postcolonial ecocritical framework to the narrative the essay shows how nonhuman nature, including the animalised human “other”, is subject to Western ideologies that see them as resources or services to be exploited. However, the essay also reveals how the nonhuman “others” are opposing these views by resisting the Western pastoralizing practices and exposing environmental threats, as well as altering some of the Diasporic character’s views of the nonhuman “other” and their sense of displacement.

This thesis explores the thematic desire to establish an ecological human bond with nature in four contemporary novels: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, An Imaginary Life by David Malouf, and The Expedition to The Baobab Tree by Wilma Stockenström. These authors share a concern with the influence that language has on human perception, and one of the most significant ways they attempt to connect with the natural world is through somehow escaping, or transcending, what they perceive to be the divisive tendencies of language. They all suggest that human perception is not steered entirely by a disembodied mind, which constructs reality through linguistic and cultural lenses, but is equally influenced by physical circumstances and embodied experiences. They explore the potential of corporeal reciprocity and empathy as that which enables understanding across cultural barriers, and a sense of ecologically intertwined kinship with nature. They all struggle to reconcile their awareness of the potential danger of relating to nature exclusively through language, with a desire to speak for the natural world in literature. I have examined whether they succeed in doing so, or whether they contradict their thematic suspicion of language with their literary medium. I have prioritised a close ecocritical reading of the novels and loosely situated the authors’ approach to nature and language within the broad theoretical frameworks of radical ecology, structuralism and poststructuralism. I suggest that these novels are best analysed in the context of an ecocritical mediation between poststructuralist conceptions of nature as inaccessible cultural construct, and the naïve conception of unmediated, pre-reflective interaction with the natural world. I draw especially on the phenomenological theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose insistence that perception is always both embodied and culturally mediated truly renders culture and nature irreducible, intertwined categories. By challenging historical dualisms like mind/body and culture/nature, the selected novels suggest a more fluid and discursive understanding of the perceived conflict between language and nature, whilst problematizing the perception of language as merely a cultural artefact. Moreover, they are examples of the kind of literature that has the potential to positively influence our human conception of nature, and adapt us better to our ecological context on a planet struggling for survival.

This thesis argues that Patrick White’s Voss, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life depict landscape in a manner that reveals the inadequacies of imperial epistemological discourses and the rationalist model of subjectivity which enables them. The study demonstrates that these novels all emphasise the instabilities inherent in imperial epistemology. White, Ondaatje and Malouf chart their protagonists’ inability to comprehend and document the landscapes they encounter, and the ways in which this failure calls into question their subjectivity and the epistemologies that underpin it. One of the principal contentions of the study, then, is that the novels under consideration deploy a postmodern aesthetic of the sublime to undermine colonial discourses. The first chapter of the thesis outlines the postcolonial and poststructural theory that informs the readings in the later chapters. Chapter Two analyses White’s representation of subjectivity, imperial discourse and the Outback in Voss. The third chapter examines Ondaatje’s depiction of the Sahara Desert in The English Patient, and focuses on his concern with the ways in which language and cartographic discourse influence the subject’s perception of the natural world. Chapter Four investigates the representation of landscape, language and subjectivity in Malouf’s An Imaginary Life. Finally, then, this study argues that literature’s unique ability to acknowledge alterity enables it to serve as an effective tool for critiquing colonial discourses.

This essay explores Swarm Consciousness in relation to the novels Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, and the manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. Through these novels, Swarm Consciousness can be reimagined in order to challenge the ways insects have previously been considered in literature. Swarm Consciousness is originally a concept from biology that explains the self-organizing systems of social insects such as for example bees or ants. Previously it was believed that these insect societies consisted of a great majority of mindless drones that were governed by a central authority, most commonly envisioned as a queen. However, if we base our vision of Swarm Consciousness on the more recent understanding of insect self-organization it is possible to challenge this rigidly divided traditional perspective into one that instead has the potential to give rise to visions of new and more creative interactions between humans and insects. These interactions are not limited to an in-group, out-group mentality, but Swarm Consciousness can be used to imagine interactions between groups, irrespective of their species identity. Due to this shift towards a more decentralized perspective, it is possible to create a new way of imagining the umwelt, as Jakob von Uexküll would define it, the unique environment, of vastly different creatures. The limits of the umwelt can be breached with the aid of Swarm Consciousness and create new possible forms of interspecies imagination. However, these intimate interactions surpass the individuals involved and create opportunities for glimpsing a wider planetary perspective which gives rise to an increased sense of planetary responsibility. Thus, Swarm Consciousness challenges both how we can think, but also who we can think with and, as a consequence, opens up new ways of perceiving unique and individual worlds, as well as the entire planet.

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.

Central to David Malouf's fiction is the importance of individual perception and interpretation in the determination of a reality which ultimately must be subjective and relative. Although his narratives include significant changes of place and circumstance it is through characters' psychological and spiritual development that transformation, or metamorphosis, is most apparent. In other words, external changes remain subordinate to the internal ones of individual growth of consciousness and altered perception. Malouf also focuses on transforming readers' perceptions through creating a new mythology. His is a mythology based on imaginative recreation of the past which is then synthesised with the present. It is these aspects of metamorphosis which will direct my analysis of Malouf's novels. Diverse thematic levels in Malouf's fiction afford a variety of critical perspectives. A review of the extensive range of material written about Malouf reveals that three critics dominate the field: Amanda Nettelbeck, Ivor Indyk and Philip Neilsen. Nettelbeck's analysis of Malouf's fiction demonstrates her claim that 'the tendency to look for national definition is [...] being replaced by a more critical concern with the processes and effects of national myth-making.' 1 The significance of language and memory, defining aspects of Malouf's style, form the basis for her detailed study. The value of 'memory' was also intrinsic to the nineteenth-century Romantic vision and indeed Nettelbeck acknowledges a Romantic influence in Malouf's novels: 'Malours writing is imbued with both a romantic aesthetic (in its appeal to enduring universals and natural cycles) and a political consciousness (in its review of cultural history in general and Australia's cultural history in particular).' 2 Despite her claim that his work contains 'contradictions' Nettelbeck asserts that Malouf achieves a perpetual balance or compromise between these two opposing critical perspectives: `Malouf forges a tentative but persevering balance between potentially oppositional ways of viewing and of knowing the world' (iii). Post-Romantic elements in Malouf's fiction are also noted by Philip Neilsen who published a revised edition of his 1990 critical volume Imagined Lives, in 1996. In this analysis of the binary oppositions underlying Malouf's writing, he also discusses the recurring themes of 'a yearning for self-transformation and for wholeness; [and] a postRomantic deference to Nature and the imagination' which prevail in Malouf's writing (218-9). Ivor Indyk, in David Malouf, provides a detailed analysis of post-Romantic aspects of Malouf's novels which include Malouf's portrayal of 'imagination as "the first principle of creation,' the significance of the organic cycles of nature, and psychological and spiritual self-transformation from fragmentation to wholeness and a sense of continuity (27). While I don't ignore the critical perspective of Nettelbeck which was, in fact, a major source of inspiration for this thesis, my analysis here emphasises the post-Romantic elements of Malouf's construction of individual metamorphoses. Although geographical, temporal and cultural issues play an important role, ultimately, my focus transcends national and contemporary aspects of identity. It is Malouf's fictional representation of the spiritual and emotional stages of life which direct my analysis. These 'stages' are exemplified by relationships with the natural world, experiences of loss and displacement, a coming to terms with one's own mortality and a search for spiritual meaning. It is these moments of inner metamorphosis, common to human development and regardless of culture or era, which create a universal dimension for Malouf's novels. In order to clarify the thematic focus for this thesis, 'aspects of metamorphosis,' I will explain some of the basic elements informing my concept of metamorphosis as it relates to Malouf's fiction. The concept of metamorphosis or transformation has interested humankind for centuries and much has been written about it from many perspectives. Theories of evolution and transformation have yielded valuable links to the past that have inspired fear and fascination throughout history. Changing form or substance, changing circumstances and changing attitudes, paradoxically remain constant elements of human experience from which we can trace our development. The idea of evolutionary connection between nature, animals and humankind remains a focus for both spiritual and biological arguments.

Includes errata tipped in between leaf 224 and 225.
Bibliography: leaves 226-238.
238 leaves ; 30 cm
Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Adelaide University, Dept. of English, 2001

In this study I propose to examine some of the roots and implications of discrimination as illustrated in a novel by a contemporary Australian novelist, David Malouf, titled Remembering Babylon (1993). My choice of Malouf's novel is grounded in the fact that, in a narrative set in mid 19th century Australia dealing with an encounter between Scottish settlers and the Aboriginal people, the novel embodies various kinds of thought systems of a discriminatory Cartesian nature. The issues in the novel are against a background of a long history of discrimination dating from antiquity which reached probably its highest point with Anglo-Saxon imperialism. It is a well known fact that the contact between European colonisers and their so-called Others has been dogged by confrontation, discrimination, exploitation and domination. The latter's responses to these phenomena have been varied. But, as JanMohamed notes in his Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa(1985) these responses have been characterised by crisis - both conscious and unconscious, material and metaphysical. And ever since this contact/reunion both groups have existed in this state of crisis and conflict -at both the manifest and latent levels. The causes of this crisis are both exo- and endogenous in origin: endogenous in the sense of the majority of these peoples' incapacity to hold their ground and 'properly' analyse/synthesise the substance of their 'new' existence and defme themselves pushed to the wall as they are by exogenous factors of European imperial and neo-imperial agendas. Most of the behaviors of the colonised, even the most 'bizarre' of them, are expressive of this existential crisis and their tenacious will to survive and approximate to a bearable life in an extremely oppressive and confusing environment. Especially in the African context, this inability to 'properly' analyse phenomena may have been brought about by a psychotic disjuncture engendered by an exogenous (European) chimerical metaphysics that parcels out existence into rigid, airtight, dualistic compartments in religion and philosophy. In these worldviews existence is described in specular, dominating and oppositional rather than in inter-subjective, co-operational and synthesizing terms. One result is that, speaking generally, Europeans are seen to exist at variance with themselves, with one another, with their environment and with non-European groups of people. Existence is defmed not as 'in' and 'with' but as 'apart from' and 'against'. Even where 'cooperation' is engaged in among them, it is for purposes of discrimination, exploitation and domination. This is not only a skewed ontology even in all demonstrable rational circles, it is also a highly escapist, confrontational, unscrupulously competitive/exploitative, and brutally pessimistic one. Philosophically, perhaps the earliest signs of European pessimistic and disjunctive construction of reality can be seen in Plato's escapist theory of reality which parcels out existence into two rigidly distinct, yet somehow causally related, worlds: one of forms/ideas and another world of material phenomena. Aristotle, Plato's own pupil, disagreed with his master on this by arguing instead that forms or ideas arise from and subsist in the world of material phenomena and not apart from and independent of the latter. One notices that all subsequent debates on the origin, nature, and relations of ideas (self-consciousness) and material phenomena, have been variations and expansions on these two diametrically opposed positions. But the most favoured school for the dualistic ontologies is idealism/rationalism, especially that of Descartes who is regarded as the highest point of the Enlightenment. These seem to fmd resonance in the subsequent theorising of Darwin, Spencer, and the social philosophy of Nietzsche among others. In spite of dissenting voices even from within their own ranks challenging such a metaphysics, the general trend among Europeans has been to hold tenaciously onto these pessimistic and escapist illusions mainly for egoistic, exploitative and supremacist purposes. Malouf does question discrimination based on binary assumptions of natural superiority and inferiority by juxtaposing notions of the human and non-human, progress and degeneration, modernity and pre-modernity (Science/Culture) in the 'Cartesian' sense as well as in the social and racial Darwinian sense. It is the approach he adopts in this project inter alia which I seek to examine in my study.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2003.