Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 “Ripped and Tortured Skin” : Mapping the Body in Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article reads Peter Carey’s novel Jack Maggs (1997) through a focus on mapping and mobility. Following John Thieme’s recent attention to postcolonial literary geographies, the article argues that ideas of mapping in the text move away from fixed notions of place and space in order to disrupt colonial dynamics of control and power. It suggests that Jack Maggs explores the concept of vernacular cartography, in which bodies bear their own maps of trauma and transience. The eponymous Jack Maggs destabilizes the borders of Empire through his mobility, though he in turn faces attempts by other characters to manage and discipline his itinerant body. Similarly, the article considers how Carey’s fictional mobility—his engagement with Charles Dickens’  Great  Expectations  and his representation of Victorian England—challenges the literary maps that had long been used to fix Australian identity. Through its concern with mobile bodies, Jack Maggs performs a postcolonial cartography that blurs notions of maps and how they represent the bodies of people, texts, and nations.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Ariel vol. 50 no. 2-3 April - July 2019 16972054 2019 periodical issue 2019 pg. 191-217
Last amended 25 Jul 2019 06:49:51
191-217 “Ripped and Tortured Skin” : Mapping the Body in Peter Carey’s Jack Maggssmall AustLit logo Ariel
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