Cirrus@Austlit

'This is the first comprehensive documentation and critical appraisal of the fascinating range of German literary responses to the Fifth Continent prior to colonisation and to watersheds in Australia's social history during the first 130 years of white settlement. The literature surveyed encompasses emigration handbooks, diaries, travelogues, exotic romance, adventure narratives, juvenile fiction and utopian extravaganzas, as well as a modest corpus of devotional, lyric and polemic verse in anthologies, German-Australian newspaper feuilletons and prisoner-of-war weeklies. Featuring among the better known authors are Therese Huber, Amalie Schoppe, Friedrich Gerstäcker, Sophie Wörishöffer, Friedrich Mader and Paul Scheerbart. But equal prominence is given to versatile 'migrant' writers such as Theodor Müller and Stefan von Kotze.' (Publication summary)

'Australia declared war on the German Empire in August 1914 not only because as a Dominion within the British Empire it was considered a matter of course. In fact the Australian Government had made up its own mind about the nature of the German threat to national security. There were a number of influential writers at the time who contributed to the formation of a distinct Australian image of German militarism. Foremost among these was Professor George Arnold Wood, the first Challis Professor of History in Sydney, 1891-1928. He had analysed the nature of Prussian-German political culture from the stand point of a radical English-trained liberal and projected an accurate image of the enemy. Basic to this was Wood's carefully drawn distinction between the Germany of true culture and humanity on the one hand and the barbarous feudal aristocracy of Prussia on the other which had determined German political culture since Bismarck had founded the Reich under Prussia in 1871.' (Publication summary)

'Anglo-Australian literature has originally developed out of British literature, with which it has always been engaged in a continuous intertextual dialogue, so it is dependent on the British literary tradition. The result of this condition is a cultural tension between Australia and Britain. Subjective, socially-based literary images projected from the Australian context about Britain, about Australia's cultural roots, about its progenitors and its believed sources in Europe, have grown directly out of this tension and reveal the conscious and unconscious development of the Anglo-Australian mind within its given cultural condition.' (Publication summary)

'As no literature can claim to be monolithic, the essays collected in this book examine the various ways in which different European literary traditions were mediated and blended through individual Australian poets into Australian literature culture. In part one the focus is thus on the new or hitherto rather neglected European literary and cultural affiliations in verse written by major Australian poets: A.D. Hope, James McAuley and Douglas Stewart. Two recent Australian verse anthologies are also examined and contemporary Aboriginal poetry in English contextualized with regard to its 'hybridization' of orality and literacy. Part two is dedicated to Slovene migrant poetry produced in Australia. It analyzes the work of two major Slovene migrant poets living in Australia, Bert Pribac and Joze Zohar.' (Publication summary)

'Since the dawn of Australian white settlement, Anglo-Australians, German-Australians and a multitude of other ethnic minorities were (and are) in search of an identity. This study aims to provide some answers to their quest and contains thoughts on other contemporary and historical aspects of life in Australia. It includes an analysis of the pivotal role of the Lutheran Church, from the very beginning inextricably linked to German settlement on the Australian continent. In Search of an Identity is a collection of essays written from the early 1990s to 1998.' (Publication summary)

'German-speaking playwrights have exercised a considerable if subtle influence on Australian theatre history. Presenting a range of paradigmatic case studies, this book offers a detailed account of Australian productions of German-language drama between 1945 and 1996. The reception of Bertolt Brecht is used as a touchstone for analysing stagings of plays by writers such as Max Frisch, Rolf Hochhuth, Peter Handke and Franz Xaver Kroetz. In addition, more recent developments in the reception of German drama on the Australian stage are discussed.' (Publication summary)