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y separately published work icon Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life multi chapter work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Judith Wright fought to save the Great Barrier Reef and campaigned for a Treaty with Aboriginal Australians. Patrick White led anti-nuclear peace marches and boycotted the Bicentenary. Helen Garner and Les Murray took a stand against political correctness. What drives our most outstanding literary figures to become activists and public intellectuals? Are they, in Shelley's famous phrase, our 'unacknowledged legislators'? How have their public interventions provoked us, and how have we responded? Can writers really change the world?

'Literary Activists examines these questions through the lives and actions of some of Australia's foremost writers. It offers fresh insight into the activism, public-intellectual careers and writings of Judith Wright, Patrick White, Oodgeroo of the tribe of Noonuccal, Les Murray, Helen Garner, David Malouf and Tim Winton. It explores the intimate connection between writers and activism and asks what this reveals about the future of Australian literature.' (Publisher's blurb)

Notes

  • Epigraph: The body is in the social world but the social world is also in the body. - Pierre Bourdieu
  • Epigraph: Decay; upon my body/ that summons was served;/ and now the flesh speaks sadly,/ How can we be saved? - Judith Wright

Contents

* Contents derived from the St Lucia, Indooroopilly - St Lucia area, Brisbane - North West, Brisbane, Queensland,:University of Queensland Press , 2009 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
A Play of Opposites : Judith Wright's Poetic-Public Crossings, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 3-28)
Imagining the Real : Patrick White's Literary-Political Career, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 29-56)
Networks and Shadows : The Public Sisterhood of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Judith Wright, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 60-77)
Inheritance and Refusal : The Properties of White Australian Poetry, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 78-94)
Alienating Powers : Les Murray's Poetry and Politics, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 97-118)
Cultivating Nation : The Quiet Diplomacy of David Malouf, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 119-136)
J'Accuse in the Antipodes : Helen Garner's Public Interventions, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 139-157)
Engaging the Masses : Tim Winton, Activism and the Literary Bestseller, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 158-180)
Coda : Australian Writer-Intellectuals in the Twenty-First Century : Legacy and Future, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 180-194)
VIEW ENTIRE CONTENTS ( works)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Works about this Work

Middlebrow Media and The Politics of Contemporary Fiction Andrew McCann , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , April / May no. 59 2016;
Notes Towards an Autobiography Patrick White : Writing, Politics and the Australia-Fiji Experience Satendra Nandan , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 9 2012;
Reviving Eva in Tim Winton’s Breath Colleen McGloin , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Commonwealth Literature , March vol. 47.1 no. 2012; (p. 109-120) 'Breath by Tim Winton is an Australian surfing narrative. As a postcolonial novel, the novel's absence of indigenous representation and its portrayal of the central female character, Eva Sanderson, solicit a reading that attempts to make sense of the intersections between gender and race central to many such texts. In this paper, I explore the representation of Eva and provide a feminist reading of the novel that re-considers its racialized, gendered, and nationalist dimensions. It is Eva, I suggest, who provides the potential for reconfiguring white surfing masculinities, but whose over-determined masculinization and often misogynistic representation within the patriarchal logic that structures the work, hinder attempts to realize this potential. This attempt is further restricted by the text's erasure of indigenous people from the landscape.' (Author's abstract)
The Solid Mandala and Patrick White’s Late Modernity Nicholas Birns , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 4 no. 1 2011; 'This essay contends that the Australian novelist Patrick White (1912-1990) presents, in his novel The Solid Mandala (1966), a prototypical evocation of late modernity that indicates precisely why and how it was different from the neoliberal and postmodern era that succeeded it. Late modernity is currently emerging as a historical period, though still a nascent and contested one. Robert Hassan speaks of the 1950-1970 era as a period which, in its 'Fordist' mode of production maintained a certain conformity yet held off the commoditisation of later neoliberalism's 'network-driven capitalism'. This anchors the sense of 'late modernity,' that will operate in this essay, though my sense of the period also follows on definitions of the term established, in very different contexts, by Edward Lucie-Smith and Tyrus Miller.' (Author's introduction)
[Review] Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life Chad Habel , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 3 no. 1 2010;
— Review of Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life Brigid Rooney , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
[Review] Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life Sally Denmead , 2008 single work review
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , Summer 2008-2009 vol. 88 no. 5 2008; (p. 51)
— Review of Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life Brigid Rooney , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
Non-Fiction Books Elli Housden , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 24 - 25 January 2009; (p. 24)
— Review of Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life Brigid Rooney , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
Australia's Writer Warriors Take Centre Stage Peter Pierce , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 31 January - 1 February 2009; (p. 33)
— Review of Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life Brigid Rooney , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
Moving On Susan Lever , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 309 2009; (p. 56-57)
— Review of Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life Brigid Rooney , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
Fighting with Their Words Fiona Capp , 2009 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 18 April 2009; (p. 27)
— Review of Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life Brigid Rooney , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
Crusaders of the Keyboard Rosemary Sorensen , 2009 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 24-25 January 2009; (p. 10-11)
The Solid Mandala and Patrick White’s Late Modernity Nicholas Birns , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 4 no. 1 2011; 'This essay contends that the Australian novelist Patrick White (1912-1990) presents, in his novel The Solid Mandala (1966), a prototypical evocation of late modernity that indicates precisely why and how it was different from the neoliberal and postmodern era that succeeded it. Late modernity is currently emerging as a historical period, though still a nascent and contested one. Robert Hassan speaks of the 1950-1970 era as a period which, in its 'Fordist' mode of production maintained a certain conformity yet held off the commoditisation of later neoliberalism's 'network-driven capitalism'. This anchors the sense of 'late modernity,' that will operate in this essay, though my sense of the period also follows on definitions of the term established, in very different contexts, by Edward Lucie-Smith and Tyrus Miller.' (Author's introduction)
Reviving Eva in Tim Winton’s Breath Colleen McGloin , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Commonwealth Literature , March vol. 47.1 no. 2012; (p. 109-120) 'Breath by Tim Winton is an Australian surfing narrative. As a postcolonial novel, the novel's absence of indigenous representation and its portrayal of the central female character, Eva Sanderson, solicit a reading that attempts to make sense of the intersections between gender and race central to many such texts. In this paper, I explore the representation of Eva and provide a feminist reading of the novel that re-considers its racialized, gendered, and nationalist dimensions. It is Eva, I suggest, who provides the potential for reconfiguring white surfing masculinities, but whose over-determined masculinization and often misogynistic representation within the patriarchal logic that structures the work, hinder attempts to realize this potential. This attempt is further restricted by the text's erasure of indigenous people from the landscape.' (Author's abstract)
Notes Towards an Autobiography Patrick White : Writing, Politics and the Australia-Fiji Experience Satendra Nandan , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 9 2012;
Middlebrow Media and The Politics of Contemporary Fiction Andrew McCann , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , April / May no. 59 2016;
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Awards

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