Tirra Lirra by the River
South Melbourne
:
Macmillan
,
1978
Z300858
1978
single work
novel
(taught in 19 units)
'Liza used to say that she saw her past life as a string of roughly-graded balls, and so did Hilda have a linear conception of hers, thinking of it as a track with detours. But for some years now I have likened mine to a globe suspended in my head, and ever since the shocking realisation that waste is irretrievalbe, I have been careful not to let this globe spin to expose the nether side on which my marriage has left its multitude of images.
'Nora Porteous has spent most of her life waiting to escape. Fleeing from her small-town family and then from her stifling marriage to a mean-spirited husband, Nora arrives finally in London where she creates a new life for herself as a successful dressmaker.
'Now in her seventies, Nora returns to Queensland to settle into her childhood home.
'But Nora has been away a long time, and the people and events of her past are not at all like she remembered them. And while some things never change, Nora is about to discover just how selective her 'globe of memory' has been.
'Tirra Lirra by the River is a moving account of one woman's remarkable life, a beautifully written novel which displays the lyrical brevity of Jessica Anderson's award-winning style.' (Publication summary)
The Norton Anthology of English Literature (B and C)
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Other Stories
Caryl Churchill, Top Girls
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
Derek Walcott, Selected Poems
Taking as its starting point the notion that each period sees itself as “modern”, the course will concentrate on key historical shifts in English literary culture from 1500 to the present. Students’ understanding of literary movements will be extended through a focus on other kinds of contexts, such as national and transnational frameworks. By considering the extent to which modernity is about rewriting the past, we will
consider periodization in relation to canonicity. Canonicity will be approached mainly in terms of literary fashion and literary value: we will consider when and why some texts remain read and taught, and in what ways they are consumed.
