y separately published work icon Down Home : Revisiting Tasmania selected work   prose   autobiography   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 1988... 1988 Down Home : Revisiting Tasmania
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Contents

* Contents derived from the London,
c
England,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
c
Western Europe, Europe,
:
Chatto and Windus , 1988 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Emohruo : Where Am I?, Peter Conrad , single work autobiography (p. 1-11)
Journeys : On the Road, Peter Conrad , single work autobiography (p. 15-29)
Journeys : On the Mountain, Peter Conrad , single work autobiography (p. 30-37)
Journeys : On the Farm, Peter Conrad , single work autobiography (p. 38-46)
Journeys : On the Water, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 47-54)
Journeys : In the Air, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 55-61)
Journeys : Under Ground, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 62-67)
An Archaeological Dig : Electropolis, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 71-78)
An Archaeological Dig : Ghost Story, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 79-87)
An Archaeological Dig : The Van Demonians, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 88-96)
An Archaeological Dig : `Last of the Tasmanians', Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 97-106)
An Archaeological Dig : Tasmaniosaurus, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 107-109)
An Archaeological Dig : Tassie, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 110-119)
Spirits of Place : The Naming of Places, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 123-134)
Spirits of Place : Devils and Holy Visitors, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 135-141)
Spirits of Place : Garden Gods, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 142-150)
Spirits of Place : Little England or Wild West?, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 151-162)
Imagining Tasmania : Cabbala, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 165-170)
Imagining Tasmania : Scenic Schemes, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 171-180)
Imagining Tasmania : Seeing Tasmania, Peter Conrad , single work prose (p. 181-188)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Island Home : Returning to Tasmania in Peter Conrad's Down Home (1988) and Tim Bowden's The Devil in Tim (2005) Robert Clarke , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Travel Writing , vol. 20 no. 1 2016; (p. 100-115)

'Tasmania is often spoken of domestically as a “problem”. Indeed, talk of “the problem of Tasmania” circulates through intellectual and governmental as much as everyday discourse. For writers like Peter Conrad and Tim Bowden – expatriate Tasmanians who write of their “return” to the island – the discourse on the problem of Tasmania is particularly challenging. As returnees, the narrators of Conrad’s Down Home (1988) and Bowden’s The Devil in Tim (2005) engage in reflections on identity, alterity and history in ways that exploit and resist the stereotypes, tropes and narratives that have traditionally underpinned discussion of the Tasmanian problem. This essay argues that while the texts can be read as complicit with the ideology that sustains the idea of that problem, in their turn to encounters with “ordinary” Tasmania they present alternative visions of the state that question the ideologies that position the island as limited, backward and perpetually beset by intransigent challenges.'

Source: Abstract.

'Gothic Splendours'? : Recent Tasmanian Historical Fiction Peter Pierce , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Island , no. 142 2015; (p. 20-26)
Peter Pierce investigates recent 'Gothic' historical fiction set in Tasmania.
'My Father's Knife' : Autobiography as Hermeneutic Phenomenology Jack Bowers , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , December vol. 7 no. 3 2010; (p. 317-323)
The Wide Brown Land : Literary Readings of Space and the Australian Continent Anthony J. Hassall , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 45-53)
'In his 1987 poem "Louvres" Les Murray speaks of journeys to 'the three quarters of our continent/set aside for mystic poetry" (2002, 239), a very different reading of Australia's inner space to A.D. Hope's 1939 vision of it as '[t]he Arabian desert of the human mind" (1966, 13) In this paper I review the opposed, contradictory ways in which the inner space of Australia has been perceived by Australian writers, and note changes in those literary perceptions, especially in the last fifty years. In that time what was routinely categerised, by Patrick White among others, as the "Dead heart" (1974, 94) - the disappointing desert encountered by nineteenth=century European explorers looking for another America -has been re-mythologised as the "Red Centre," the symbolic, living heart of the continent. What Barcroft Boake's 1897 poem hauntingly portrayed as out where the dead men lie" (140,-2) is now more commonly imagined as a site of spiritual exploration and psychic renewal, a place where Aboriginal identification with the land is respected and even shared. This change was powerfully symbolised in 1985 by the return to the traditional Anangu owners of the title deeds to the renamed Uluru, the great stone sited at the centre of the continent; but while this re-mythologising has been increasingly influential in literary readings, older, more negative constructions of that space as hostile and sterile have persisted, so that contradictory attitudes towards the inner space of Australia continue to be expressed. In reviewing a selection of those readings, I am conscious that they both distort and influence broader cultural perceptions. I am also aware that literary reconstructions of the past reflect both the attitudes of the time depicted and the current attitudes of the writer, and that separating the two is seldom simple. Finally, I am conscious of the connections between literary readings and those in art and film of the kind documented by Roslynn Hanes in her 1998 study Seeking the Centre: the Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film, and those in television and advertising. I have however, with the exception of the Postscript, limited my paper to literary readings, with an emphasis on works published since Haynes's study.' (Author's abstract p. 45)
Medievallism and Memory Work : Archer's Folly and the Gothic Revival Pile Jenna Mead , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture 2006; (p. 99-118)
Jenna Mead analyses the relationship between medievalism and memory in a reading of 'two of medievalism's afterlives. [The] first sifts together two medieval towers [in Tasmania] and the sparse and ephemeral historical documents pertaining to one moment in the history of those towers; [the] second reads three documents in what might be called the history of literary studies in Australia and, more narrowly, that history as it focuses on medieval literary studies' (101).
Exploration of an Introverted Island Mary Lord , 1988 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 5-6 November, 1988; (p. 6)

— Review of Down Home : Revisiting Tasmania Peter Conrad , 1988 selected work prose autobiography criticism
Mapping the Island of Self Martin Flanagan , 1988 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 29 December 1988; (p. 19)

— Review of Down Home : Revisiting Tasmania Peter Conrad , 1988 selected work prose autobiography criticism
Untitled A. Porteous , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: Preludes : A Literary Annual , October no. 5 1989; (p. 28-32)

— Review of Down Home : Revisiting Tasmania Peter Conrad , 1988 selected work prose autobiography criticism
Recolonisation and Disinheritance : The Case of Tasmania Peter Pierce , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Critics and Writers Speak : Revisioning Post-Colonial Studies 2006; (p. 106-114)
'The essay discusses the appropriations of the history and landscape of Tasmania, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and particularly by outsiders to the state, whether they are European or from the Australian mainland' (106). Pierce draws on the texts cited above, and on critical responses to these texts to demonstrate the conflicted experiences of departure from Tasmania and, in some cases, an equally unsettling return.
Medievallism and Memory Work : Archer's Folly and the Gothic Revival Pile Jenna Mead , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture 2006; (p. 99-118)
Jenna Mead analyses the relationship between medievalism and memory in a reading of 'two of medievalism's afterlives. [The] first sifts together two medieval towers [in Tasmania] and the sparse and ephemeral historical documents pertaining to one moment in the history of those towers; [the] second reads three documents in what might be called the history of literary studies in Australia and, more narrowly, that history as it focuses on medieval literary studies' (101).
'My Father's Knife' : Autobiography as Hermeneutic Phenomenology Jack Bowers , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , December vol. 7 no. 3 2010; (p. 317-323)
The Wide Brown Land : Literary Readings of Space and the Australian Continent Anthony J. Hassall , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 45-53)
'In his 1987 poem "Louvres" Les Murray speaks of journeys to 'the three quarters of our continent/set aside for mystic poetry" (2002, 239), a very different reading of Australia's inner space to A.D. Hope's 1939 vision of it as '[t]he Arabian desert of the human mind" (1966, 13) In this paper I review the opposed, contradictory ways in which the inner space of Australia has been perceived by Australian writers, and note changes in those literary perceptions, especially in the last fifty years. In that time what was routinely categerised, by Patrick White among others, as the "Dead heart" (1974, 94) - the disappointing desert encountered by nineteenth=century European explorers looking for another America -has been re-mythologised as the "Red Centre," the symbolic, living heart of the continent. What Barcroft Boake's 1897 poem hauntingly portrayed as out where the dead men lie" (140,-2) is now more commonly imagined as a site of spiritual exploration and psychic renewal, a place where Aboriginal identification with the land is respected and even shared. This change was powerfully symbolised in 1985 by the return to the traditional Anangu owners of the title deeds to the renamed Uluru, the great stone sited at the centre of the continent; but while this re-mythologising has been increasingly influential in literary readings, older, more negative constructions of that space as hostile and sterile have persisted, so that contradictory attitudes towards the inner space of Australia continue to be expressed. In reviewing a selection of those readings, I am conscious that they both distort and influence broader cultural perceptions. I am also aware that literary reconstructions of the past reflect both the attitudes of the time depicted and the current attitudes of the writer, and that separating the two is seldom simple. Finally, I am conscious of the connections between literary readings and those in art and film of the kind documented by Roslynn Hanes in her 1998 study Seeking the Centre: the Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film, and those in television and advertising. I have however, with the exception of the Postscript, limited my paper to literary readings, with an emphasis on works published since Haynes's study.' (Author's abstract p. 45)
The Landscape of Self : Peter Conrad's Tasmania Cassandra Pybus , 1989 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 48 no. 4 1989; (p. 797-804)
Last amended 10 Sep 2008 11:00:53
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