Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 The Redemption of the Larrikin at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'While significant Australian literary mythology surrounds the bushman and masculinity in rural settings, this chapter focusses on the larrikin in fiction around the turn of the twentieth century to examine how an idealised, nationally distinctive character type was imagined in the city as part of an evolving urban Australian culture. From the 1870s, the larrikin symbolised the violence of the working class in its most threatening and sinister guise. However, several decades later, Ethel Turner’s The Little Larrikin (1896) and Louis Stone’s Jonah (1911) contribute to the ‘rescue’ of the literary larrikin in their attempts to show the figure as endearing, distinctly Australian, and ground down by poverty. Both novels present redeeming depictions of larrikin figures, one a small middle-class boy who has pretensions to becoming a larrikin, and the other, an orphaned ‘hunchback’ who gradually builds his own fortune and progressively leaves behind the pull of the ‘push.’'

Source: Abstract

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature Jessica Gildersleeve (editor), London : Routledge , 2020 21550229 2020 anthology criticism

    'In recent years, Australian literature has experienced a revival of interest both domestically and internationally. The increasing prominence of work by writers like Christos Tsiolkas, heightened through television and film adaptation, as well as the award of major international prizes to writers like Richard Flanagan, and the development of new, high-profile prizes like the Stella Prize, have all reinvigorated interest in Australian literature both at home and abroad. This Companionemerges as a part of that reinvigoration, considering anew the history and development of Australian literature and its key themes, as well as tracing the transition of the field through those critical debates. It considers works of Australian literature on their own terms, as well as positioning them in their critical and historical context and their ethical and interactive position in the public and private spheres. With an emphasis on literature’s responsibilities, this book claims Australian literary studies as a field uniquely positioned to expose the ways in which literature engages with, produces and is produced by its context, provoking a critical re-evaluation of the concept of the relationship between national literatures, cultures, and histories, and the social function of literary texts.'

    Source : Publisher's blurb.

    London : Routledge , 2020
    pg. 18-24
Last amended 19 Sep 2024 11:02:59
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