Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Double Trouble : The Teacher/Satirist Duality in Thea Astley’s Critical Writings
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Over a fifty-year period, from 1944 to 1994, Thea Astley published a number of critical writings, including essays, newspaper articles and reviews, and short reflections and meditations on her craft. Despite a renewed interest in Astley’s work, however, most critical interrogations of her oeuvre focus on her novels, and more recently her poetry. As a result, Astley’s critical writing has not been afforded the same breadth and depth of investigation as her fiction. This lacuna is troubling, since Astley’s critical works are important not only for their insight, but for what they reveal about Astley’s self-representation, and in particular the dual identity that she embodied as both a teacher and a satirist. This article argues that these dual roles emerge clearly in Astley’s essays and in fact are inextricable from many of her works. Further, the tensions between these two personae — Astley as teacher and Astley as satirist — reveal natural overlaps with her imaginative writing, and reflect her changing ideas about fiction writing, literature, and education.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Queensland Review Thea Astley Special Issue vol. 26 no. 2 December 2019 18457566 2019 periodical issue

    'I am honoured and delighted to have been invited, along with Associate Professor Jessica Gildersleeve, to edit this special issue of Queensland Review on the work of Thea Astley. I owe Jessica heartfelt thanks for her hard work and easy collegiality.

    'Fifteen years since Astley’s death, the appearance of this collection of essays marks the development of a growing body of biographical and critical studies of her work. The essays complement Karen Lamb’s 2015 biography, Inventing Her Own Weather, and my critical monograph, The Fiction of Thea Astley (2016), as well as the collection of essays edited by myself and Paul Genoni, Thea Astley’s Fictional Worlds (2006). Most recently, Thea Astley: Selected Poems appeared in 2017, edited by Cheryl Taylor (who has an essay in this issue) and published by the University of Queensland Press (Astley’s publisher for many years).' (Susan Sheridan Introduction)

    2019
    pg. 218-231
Last amended 18 Dec 2019 08:33:59
218-231 Double Trouble : The Teacher/Satirist Duality in Thea Astley’s Critical Writingssmall AustLit logo Queensland Review
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