The Sense of Place in Australia single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 The Sense of Place in Australia
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Introduction to chapter three.

Notes

  • Epigraph:

    The land around us is a reflection, not only of our practical and technological capacities, but also of our culture and society—-of our very needs, our hopes, our preoccupations and dreams. —- J. E. Maplas, Place and Experience

    A major feature of post-colonial literatures is the concern with place and displacement. It is here that the special post-colonial crisis of identity comes into being; the concern with the development or recovery of an effective identifying relationship between self and place. —-Bill Ashcroft etc., The Empire Writes Back

    We have a culture that doesn’t fit the land, or hasn’t come to terms with it. It’s a hangover from the days of our foundation. The Age of Reason came to a country that was different from anything that could then be imagined. This lodged in our civilization a sense of guilt that has to be exorcised before we feel that our culture has an intellectual validity. —-Thomas Keneally, “Interview with Neil Jillett”

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon From Fixity to Fluidity : The Theme of Identity in Thomas Keneally's Fiction Xiaojin Zhou , Qindao : China Ocean University Press , 2009 Z1741824 2009 multi chapter work criticism

    'Born into an Irish Catholic family in Sydney, Thomas Keneally published his first novel, The Place at Whitton, in 1964, four years after he abandoned his study for priesthood. The success of that gothic horror set in a seminary triggered a successful writing career of over forty years, in which he produced 25 novels, while making frequent and fruitful incursions into the world of nonfiction. Today Keneally is Australia’s best-known writer and Australia’s living treasure. Although Spielberg’s Schindler’s List became a media event and a household word in the 1990s, it hardly qualified Keneally as an overnight sensation. By that time, Keneally was already a widely acclaimed writer in Britain and America, truly “international”, as the Australians would like to put it, since he had publishers on both sides of the Atlantic and had won the 1982 Booker Prize. Despite discernible changes in his earlier and later works, it’s almost impossible, even as a critical expediency, to divide Keneally’s writing career into clearly marked stages. Writing on both “Australian” and “international” themes, and constantly shifting between past and present, Keneally failed to follow the normal path of arrival, growth and maturity, much to the disappointment of some Australian critics, who eagerly delighted in anticipating the destination of his literary journey...' (Author's introduction)

    Qindao : China Ocean University Press , 2009
    pg. 57-59
Last amended 18 Sep 2015 06:36:23
57-59 The Sense of Place in Australiasmall AustLit logo
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