Cirrus@Austlit

'The Pygmalion story in Metamorphosis by Roman poet Ovid originates from the ancient Greek mythology, reflecting poet's affirmation and eulogy of the value and significance of this life while Bernard Shaw's namesake comedy Pygmalion emphasizes the environmental and educational influence on the formation of perfect personality, evident of bourgeois values of freedom, equality and independence. Roman poet Ovid's Pygmalion story and Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, both of which end in comedy, maintain an optimistic outlook towards the making of a perfect human being. But Patrick White's The Vivisector, which is in fact a Pygmalion story rewritten as a modern tragedy, presents the life of a superman artist, Hurtle Duffield, whose vivisection of his models leads him not only to a success in art but also to the deconstruction and destruction of real human life. The story is indicative of a tragic failure on Hurtle's effort to reshape and reorder the chaotic modern world as well as an existential dilemma of modern man who vainly seeks to establish a spiritual homeland. (1-2)

'Since the 1990s, Critical Whiteness Studies has become established as an interdisciplinary field. Centering round the critique of whiteness as a socially constructed ideology, it has led race studies into a new historical stage. It encompasses multiple fields in humanities and social sciences, while furnishing new perspectives for literary studies. Drawing in the theories of Critical Whiteness Studies, this paper focuses on the analyses of two historical novels by the Aboriginal writers in Australia, Eric Wilmott's Pemulwuy and Kim Scott's Benang : From the Heart. Resorting to distinct discursive strategies, the two novels have attempted to render whiteness visible and subvert the hegemonic historical narrative constructed by the colonizers. In the meantime, the novels have aired the collective appeals of the Aboriginal people and reconstructed from the Aboriginal perspective the Australian history disrupted by the colonial invasion.. (14-15)

'This paper discusses the decolonizing strategies in the novel of Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World by Australian writer Mudrooroo. Through strategies like marginalized subjectivity, imperialist culture and Aboriginal culture, appropriation and rewriting, Mudrooroo effectively reveals the hidden truth of history which has been othered in the context of colonial discourse. He uses the white form and Aboriginal content to combat against the oppression of the colonial culture and successfully reconstructs a new Aboriginal identity in the multicultural Australia.' (32)

'Tim Winton is one of the most remarkable writers in the contemporary Australian literary arena. Shallows is a representative work of his early fiction about anti-whaling and environmental protection. This paper, from the perspective of eco-ethics, aims to interpret Winton’s eco-ethical vision with the analysis of ecological crises at the natural, social and spiritual level in Shallows, arguing that the root of ecological crises is “anthropocentricism”, and only after getting out of the spiritual crisis and learning to care and love everything in nature can human beings solve other ecological crises and achieve a harmonious state with nature.' (Publication abstract)

'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, created by Australian dramatist Ray Lawler, is widely acclaimed by the literary circles as a real Australian drama with historical significance. The play not only makes a declaration to the world the birth of Australian national drama, but also through the depiction of the life of the bottom social class in Australia, expresses the author's concern and reflection of the historical context of the play, namely the 1950s, the crucial period in Australia national development, during which the construction of Australian cultural identity, the role of women, and the stereotyped image of man have undergone a transition and change.' (61-62)

'In The Fat Man in History, the closed society represents the image of Panopticon. Deliberately chosen, the closed and separated space in the story is the place where Nancy's control over the fat men can be fulfilled. The space enables Nancy to exercise her power by disciplining the body, inspecting the fat men and preserving anonymity, which is the interpretation of Michel Foucault's Panopticon.' (75)

'This paper analyses from the perspective of existentialism the novel Voss by Patrick White, in which Voss and Laura are converted from voluntarism to the pursuit of their authentic existences by the sufferings in the expedition. This paper concludes that White criticizes the nihilism inherent in the philosophical tradition of rationalism, promotes the pursuit of man's authentic existence, and explains the importance of the existentialist view of 'being-toward-death' to man's authentic existence illustrated by Voss and Laura's spiritual marriage and Voss' death. This paper points out that some of the White's philosophical ideas in Voss resonates with existentialism and , therefore, Voss is a classic novel with profound existential thoughts.' (84-85)

'The Ancestor Game is a novel about the family history of immigrant Feng's four generation from Fujian, China to Australia with the theme of individual, land, history, thought and culture. The lifetime of the fourth generation Langtze is closely related with art. In the light of the thought of existential needs in the theory of personality by humanistic psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, readers can interpret the protagonist Langtze's artistic complex to better understand the excellent work.' (97)

'The Australian literary giant, 1973 Novel Prize winner Patrick White, has been a most favourite subject of study with the Chinese scholars in related field. since he was first introduced into this country in the early 1980s, remarkable achievements have been made, probing from different angles and covering various aspects. A necessary review, however, reveals certain weaknesses or maybe problems behind the flush, such as the imbalance and overlapping of research due to the lack of proper mapping or too much spontaneity, the mechanical application of theories, sheer extolment and questionable propriety of research contents, etc.. For a desired wholesome development, it is advised that proper guidance be provided so that shortcoming can be overcome and the overall quality of research guaranteed. ' (205-206)

'Being unfamiliar to most Chinese readers, Richard Flanagan is one of the most accomplished and distinctive writers in Australia in recent twenty years. Representing growing diversification of multiculturalism in Australia, all his works, from Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping and Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish to The Unknown Terrorist, Wanting and The Narrow Road to the Deep North, are miraculous flowers bursting into bloom in the fertile soil of life, in which there is a conciliation of post-modernism and realism in creation, characterized by strong self-consciousness and magnificent realistic features. Some critics argue Flanagan reminds them of such masters as Whitman, Joyce, Faulkner and Garcia Marquez etc. As the laureat of the 2014 Man Booker Prize for English literature, Richard Flanagan is a bright star rising high from Tasmania, Australia.' (215-216)

'At the turning of the century of 20th, Australia saw a great troubling and disturbing period in her history. On the one hand, this period is when Australian nationalism began to boom in face of the economic depression; on the other hand, this period is when Australian native writers began to write about Australian landscapes, characters and bush. Influenced by the national magazine bulletin, the native writers of Australia represented what Australian bush is really about with realism sketches. In this sense, the novels written at the turning of the the 20th century are bush realism novels and this article is to explore deep into what bush realism is and how it came to being under the context of Australian nationalism.' (220-221)

'Australian Aboriginal literature, a unique genre in Australian Literature, has greatly contributed to its diversity and colorfulness. Its status has improved because of the awaking of Aboriginal people and constant emerging of Aboriginal writers. This paper emphatically probes into three stages, reviews the Australian Aboriginal literature studies in China and discusses some of the major characteristics. Remarkable achievements have been made in the past thirty years, but there still exist some problems, including inadequate sense of Aboriginality, lack of diachronic and holistic study of a writer's thoughts, inadequate research on the works of Aboriginal writers born after the 1960s.' (236-237)

'The paper studies the publication of Australian children's literature published by Chinese publishing houses in mainland China. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used to analyze and discuss the collected 434 publication, publishing houses and writers. The research demonstrates that although the number of Australian children's literature published by Chinese publishing houses is on the increase these years, there is still a great potential for the publication of Australian children's literature in mainland China. Its future tends to be bright and prosperous.' (248)

An analysis of characterisation and narrative voice in Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria. This paper also comments on the Indigenous oral tradition in the creation of the novel.