The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Author's abstract: 'A major preoccupation in David Malouf's fiction - particularly in evidence in Remembering Babylon but also in An Imaginary Life - has to do with the relationship between words and things, and with the quest for a kind of language that might be in complete harmony with reality.
At times, Malouf seems to believe this quest can be successful, in spite of the arbitrary and conventional nature of language. But this conviction is undermined by the realisation that language gives shape to reality as we see it, that it is creative rather than simply referential' (99).
Notes
-
Epigraph: We have only to find the name, and let its illumination fill us. (D Malouf, An Imaginary Life.)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 28 Jun 2007 09:23:19
99-110
Reconciling Words and Things : Language Allegories in David Malouf's Remembering Babylon
Commonwealth
Commonwealth
119-132
Reconciling Words and Things : Language Allegories in David Malouf's Remembering Babylon
Export this record
