Cirrus@Austlit

'This book introduces in a lively and succinct way the major writers, literary movements, styles and genres that, at the beginning of a new century, are seen as constituting the field of Australian literature. The book consciously takes a perspective that sees literary works not as aesthetic objects created in isolation by unique individuals, but as cultural products influenced and constrained by the social, political and economic circumstances of their times. It will be an indispensable reference for both national and international readers. It covers Indigenous texts, colonial writing and reading, poetry, fiction and theater throughout two centuries, biography and autobiography, and literary criticism in Australia.' (Publication summary)

This literary reader on Australian studies for India not only investigates this central question by exploring many other facets of Australian literature especially Australian cross-cultural relationships with India and Asia. Taking a broad view of what Australian literature is, it explores the dimensions of Australian literature (national, Aboriginal, multicultural, ecocritical, postcolonial, modernist, comparative, feminist, and popular) in its varied genres of drama, poetry, autobiography. explorers' journals, short stories, literature of war, travel writing, Anglo-Indian fiction, diasporic writing, mainstream novel, nature writing, children's literature, romance, science fiction, gothic literture, horror, crime fiction, queer writing and humour. Each paper in this Reader presents different ways of "reading down under" and "performing Australianness" (Source: Backcover).

'Modern Australian Criticism and Theory brings together a selection of contemporary essays on Australian literature and cultural studies written by leading Australian critics and theorists...

The essays selected for this volume reflect upon the main critical and theoretical influences on the study of Australian literature and culture since the 1980s...' Source: Modern Australian Criticism and Theory (2010)

'Was Australian culture born modern or has it always been behind the game, never quite modern enough? Was it always already or only always almost modern? David Carter’s essays examine the complex engagements of Australian writers, artists, editors and consumers with 20th-century modernity, social and political crisis, and the impact of modernisms. Always Almost Modern ranges from the great mid-century novels of authors such as Eleanor Dark and M. Barnard Eldershaw to the unprecedented bestseller that was They’re a Weird Mob, from famous to largely forgotten local magazines and to film and television, and from the avant-garde to nationalism, communism and the middlebrow. Chapters engage with key themes in contemporary literary and cultural studies, exploring new ways of understanding Australian culture in terms of its modernity and transnationalism.' (Publisher's blurb)