Literature and Politics (ENGL107)
Semester 2 / 2010

Texts

Homage To Catalonia!$!Orwell!$! !$!!$!
Disgrace!$!Coetzee!$! !$!!$!
Othello!$!Shakespeare!$! !$!!$!
Tale Of Two Cities!$!Dickens!$! !$!!$!
y separately published work icon Loaded Christos Tsiolkas , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 1995 Z565443 1995 single work novel (taught in 40 units)

'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.

'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.

'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.

'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)

y separately published work icon Holy Day The Red Sea Andrew Bovell , Sydney : Currency Press Playbox Theatre , 2001 Z900872 2001 single work drama (taught in 2 units)

'On the white frontier in mid-nineteenth century Australia, a lone, bloodied woman arrives at a traveller's rest in the midst of a violent desert storm with a shocking story to tell. Aborigines have allegedly murdered her husband and stolen her infant child. But an Aboriginal woman has a different story to tell. What would cause a missionary's wife to lie? What chance does the word of an Aboriginal woman have against hers? A chilling mystery that draws together the lives of four extraordinary women and their men, all struggling to survive in a hostile and misunderstood landscape. (1 act, 4 male, 4 female).' (Publication summary)

Picture Of Dorian Gray!$!Wilde!$! !$!!$!
Oroonoko and Other Writings!$!Behn!$! !$!!$!

Description

Writers have always addressed political issues, from supporting or resisting revolution, to analysing the ethics of war or the sophistries of diplomatic or political language, to attacking the class politics of industrialisation, the racial exploitation of empire, sexual inequalities, prejudice and domestic violence. Writers have also drawn attention to the nexus between power and language. The ways in which language masks ideology, normalises inequality and stifles dissent. That said, writers have also participated in the dissemination of myths, stereotypes and narratives that privilege certain world views over others. The relationship between politics and literature, is therefore, never simple. This unit is designed to spotlight a series of central political issues that writers have addressed from the Renaissance to the present. Each week a writer or writers are studied in relationship to the political issues or contexts that their work addresses.

Other Details

Levels: Undergraduate
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