Texts

y separately published work icon Collected Poems 1942-1985 Judith Wright , Pymble : Angus and Robertson , 1994 Z501989 1994 selected work poetry war literature satire (taught in 8 units)
Also poetry by Kenneth Slessor, Judith Wrght, Gwen Harwood, and John Shaw Neilson.
Mirdinan Paddy Roe , 1983 single work prose Indigenous story (taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: Gularabulu : Stories from the West Kimberley 1983; (p. 1-17)
How the Reverend Joseph Simmondsen Lost His Character The Parson's Blackboy Jack Fruit , 1892 single work short story humour (taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 21 May vol. 12 no. 640 1892; (p. 22) The Last of Six : Tales of the Austral Tropics 1893; (p. 102-107) Tales of the Austral Tropics 1894; (p. 145-156) The Bulletin Story Book : A Selection of Stories and Literary Sketches from 'The Bulletin' [1881-1901] 1901; (p. 35-39) Australian Short Stories 1928; (p. 121-125) Australian Short Stories 1951; (p. 19-24)

— Appears in: Australian Short Stories 1930; (p. 137-144)

— Appears in: Australische Erzähler : Eine Anthologie 1961; (p. 22-27)
Monsieur Caloche Tasma , 1878 1878 single work short story satire (taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: In Australian Wilds and Other Colonial Tales and Sketches 1889; (p. 77-107) A Sydney Sovereign and Other Tales 1890; (p. 188-216) Australian Round-Up : Stories From 1790 to 1950 1953; (p. 44-59) From the Verandah : Stories of Love and Landscape by Nineteenth Century Australian Women 1987; (p. 11-26) Eclipsed : Two Centuries of Australian Women's Fiction 1988; (p. 82-101) The Penguin Best Australian Short Stories 1991; (p. 77-95)
A Frenchman seeks work and ends up at a cattle station, where he has trouble settling into his new role. 
A Sweet Day Ada Cambridge , 1897 single work short story (taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: The Australian Town and Country Journal , 13 August vol. 57 no. 1488 1898; (p. 33)

— Appears in: The Penguin Book of 19th Century Australian Literature 1993; (p. 151-163)
y separately published work icon Gwen Harwood : Collected Poems 1943-1995 Gwen Harwood , Alison Hoddinott (editor), Gregory Kratzmann (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2003 Z1008048 2003 collected work poetry (taught in 1 units) 'This collection represents the full body of Gwen Harwood's poetry: all six published volumes, as well as most of her uncollected poems ... with an editorial introduction, and extensive notes providing background to particular poems or obscure references ... The poet's own biographical notes on the pseudonymous selves she adopted in her poems of the 1960s and 1970s add further value.' (Cover)
y separately published work icon Steam Pigs Melissa Lucashenko , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1997 Z399534 1997 single work novel (taught in 5 units)

"I haven't got a 'boyfriend', Mum." "Fine way to be carrying on then, out all Sat'dy night with a strange fella..." "Muuum. " "Don't you marm me, my girl. When I was your age I wasn't out running around with any stray bloke with a flash car and the gift of the gab. "And when I'm your age," thought Sue maliciously, "I won't be ringing up my kids to scab money and make their lives a misery into the bargain."

'Sue Wilson, young and Aboriginal, escapes her "too-large, too-poor family in a too-small" north Queensland town for Logan City's frontier sprawl. Entering "the mythic world of Work" she discovers that the view from behind the bar is less than glamorous, but pays the rent. When she meets Roger the good times begin to roll until she finds herself starring in a feature with medium level violence. Melissa Lucashenko's first novel makes no apologies. With direct and gutsy language, her characters live their lives in the shadows cast by indifferent affluence.'

(Source: UQP website: www.uqp.uq.edu.au)

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 The Eye of the Storm Patrick White , London : Jonathan Cape , 1973 Z463974 1973 single work novel (taught in 7 units)

"Elizabeth Hunter, an ex-socialite in her eighties, has a mystical experience during a summer storm in Sydney which transforms all her relationships: her existence becomes charged with a meaning which communicates itself to those around her. From this simple scenario Patrick White unfurls a monumental exploration of the tides of love and hate, comedy and tragedy, impotence and and longing that fester within family relationships."

Source: Penguin Books Australia.
y separately published work icon Akhenaten Dorothy Porter , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1992 Z248289 1992 single work novel (taught in 6 units)

'Akhenaten was a fascinating, shadowy figure in Egyptian history – archaeologists have discovered attempts to eradicate all traces of his brief reign, but enough remains to tell a remarkable story of incest, heresy, androgyny and a massive cult of personality.

'Like Albert Camus celebrated Caligula, Dorothy Porter's Akhenaten is an attractive warped megalomaniac who attempted to construct an heretical religion around one Sun God, with himself at the centre.

'Akhenaten is a novel in verse that captures the obsessive, erotic nature of its central figure. It is a towering achievement.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Picador ed.)

Description

This course introduces students to major issues and works in Australian literature, with a particular focus on material from the past two centuries. It contextualises important works in terms of a range of local and global literary and cultural formations, thus providing a map of the complex and changing nature of national culture and introducing students to the richness and diversity of Australian literature.

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