Redirecting Australian cultural debated away from its traditional emphasis on 'The Bush', this course investigates how the fictionalised city has increasingly acted as a focus for cultural redefinition and as a catalyst for literary experimentation and innovation. The selected texts represent the variety of narrative modes used to construct the Australian city: popular fiction, social realism, autobiography, social satire and urban picaresque, as well as explore issues of regionalism and expatriation, and the interplay of architecture and inner-urban landscapes. Authors studied include Garner, Grenville, Malouf and Winton.
