Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Intimate Horizons : The Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Despite the stereotype of post-colonial Australian society as secular and irreligious, a radical concept of the sacred, located in place, has pervaded its literature. Australian writers again and again break away from received, orthodox notions of religious experience, imagining a transformed post-colonial sacred in Australia.

For Indigenous and non-Indigenous societies 'place' has had a particularly post-colonial function in contesting imperial cultural forms, including received forms of religion. 'Horizonal' is the concept of space dominated by an apparently infinite horizon. This book reveals, in its discussion of contemporary literature, an Australian sacred emerging from the material, proximate and intimate experiences of the everyday. -- Back cover.

Exhibitions

Contents

* Contents derived from the Adelaide, South Australia,:ATF Press , 2009 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Introduction : The Sacred in Australian Literary Culture, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 1-31)
Intimate Distance : Patrick White and the Australian Sacred, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 33-68)
'The Tiny Not the Immense' : Francis Webb and the Location of the Sacred, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 69-103)
Displaced : James McAuley's Haunted Poetics, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 105-139)
The Moving Image of Place : Judith Wright, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 141-163)
'At-Home' Two-Ways : Negotiating the Sacred in the Pastoral Zone, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 165-204)
'Stories of the Old Country' : Reinventing Dreamtime Tropes in 'Poor Fellow My Country', 'Benang', and 'Carpentaria', Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 205-241)
The Other Shore Is Here : Contemporary Poetry of the Sacred, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 243-286)
The Earthed Sacred : Literary Imagination and the Sacred in Contemporary Australian Fiction, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 287-318)
Conclusion, Bill Ashcroft , Frances Devlin-Glass , Lyn McCredden , single work criticism (p. 319-328)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

The Ruin of Time and the Temporality of Belonging : Journey to the Stone Country and Landscape of Farewell Brigid Rooney , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 201-216)
'At first glance, Landscape of Farewell (2007) appears a simpler, more streamlined story than its predecessor, Journey to the Stone Country (2002). In the first person, Max Otto, a widowed German professor specialising in the history of massacres, tells of his journey to Mount Nebo in Central Queensland, a journey precipitated by his encounter with visiting Aboriginal Australian academic Vita McLelland. His journey is conducted in the context of his not yet assuaged grief for his wife, and of his haunted suspicions about his father's complicity in the horrors of wartime Germany. Peter Pierce (2004) has identified some of Miller's enduring preoccupations: 'solitariness', 'artful evocations of the visceral', tensions between ancestry, freedom and exile, and the indeterminacy of memory. While many of these recur in Landscape, I focus in this paper on how the theme of time is exercised in this novel, with its spare but concentrated prose and apparently straightforward narration. How does Landscape of Farewell draw us inwards as well as onwards, into an intricately nested set of temporalities that speak to selfhood, truth and reparation, to cross-cultural translation, to mortality and relinquishment, and to the intractable terrain of moral debate about the past? What does Miller's mode of narration bring to familiar questions, in Australian culture, of place and belonging?' (Source: http://sydney.edu.au/arts/australian_literature/images/content/conferences/miller_abstracts2.pdf)
'Grace of the Crocodiles' : Towards Deterritorialization Marc Delrez , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Engaging with Literature of Commitment : The Worldly Scholar (Volume 2) 2012; (p. 231-244)

'In an article entitled 'Minimal Selves,' Stuart Hall suggests that 'identity' is formed at the unstable point where the 'unspeakable' stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture.' This essay is an attempt to explore just such an articulation of identity, as it crystallizes at the boundary between the private and the public in one of Robert Drewe's most recent novels, Grace (2005)...' (From author's introduction 231)

[Review] Intimate Horizons Lachlan Brown , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 109-112)

— Review of Intimate Horizons : The Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature Bill Ashcroft , Lyn McCredden , Frances Devlin-Glass , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
‘Shapely Experience’ and the Limits of ‘Late Colonial Transcendentalism’ : The Portrait of the Artist as Soldier in Roger McDonald’s 1915 Christopher Lee , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011;
'This essay argues that Roger McDonald's debut novel 1915 represents a form of literary modernism which rejects the easy aesthetic comforts of 'late colonial transcendentalism' (17). McDonald presents an intricate -- we might even say ritualised -- pattern of subversive counterpoint to 'reveal and dramatise the failure of the subject to escape its own limits, and hence its own history' (McCann 155). The result is a highly self-conscious literary novel that seeks to reconcile the art of high modernism with a postcolonial practice interested in the consequences of public memory.' (Author's abstract)
7th Australian Poetry Festival : Inventing the Tradition Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Five Bells , Spring vol. 17 no. 4 2010; (p. 6-13)
Intimate Horizons : The Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature by Bill Ashcroft, Frances Devlin-Glass and Lyn McCredden Carole Cusack , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 10 2010;

— Review of Intimate Horizons : The Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature Bill Ashcroft , Lyn McCredden , Frances Devlin-Glass , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
[Review] Intimate Horizons Lachlan Brown , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 109-112)

— Review of Intimate Horizons : The Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature Bill Ashcroft , Lyn McCredden , Frances Devlin-Glass , 2009 multi chapter work criticism
Colonial Knowledge, Post-Colonial Poetics Lyn McCredden , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature 2010; (p. 255-277)
7th Australian Poetry Festival : Inventing the Tradition Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Five Bells , Spring vol. 17 no. 4 2010; (p. 6-13)
‘Shapely Experience’ and the Limits of ‘Late Colonial Transcendentalism’ : The Portrait of the Artist as Soldier in Roger McDonald’s 1915 Christopher Lee , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011;
'This essay argues that Roger McDonald's debut novel 1915 represents a form of literary modernism which rejects the easy aesthetic comforts of 'late colonial transcendentalism' (17). McDonald presents an intricate -- we might even say ritualised -- pattern of subversive counterpoint to 'reveal and dramatise the failure of the subject to escape its own limits, and hence its own history' (McCann 155). The result is a highly self-conscious literary novel that seeks to reconcile the art of high modernism with a postcolonial practice interested in the consequences of public memory.' (Author's abstract)
'Grace of the Crocodiles' : Towards Deterritorialization Marc Delrez , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Engaging with Literature of Commitment : The Worldly Scholar (Volume 2) 2012; (p. 231-244)

'In an article entitled 'Minimal Selves,' Stuart Hall suggests that 'identity' is formed at the unstable point where the 'unspeakable' stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture.' This essay is an attempt to explore just such an articulation of identity, as it crystallizes at the boundary between the private and the public in one of Robert Drewe's most recent novels, Grace (2005)...' (From author's introduction 231)

The Ruin of Time and the Temporality of Belonging : Journey to the Stone Country and Landscape of Farewell Brigid Rooney , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 201-216)
'At first glance, Landscape of Farewell (2007) appears a simpler, more streamlined story than its predecessor, Journey to the Stone Country (2002). In the first person, Max Otto, a widowed German professor specialising in the history of massacres, tells of his journey to Mount Nebo in Central Queensland, a journey precipitated by his encounter with visiting Aboriginal Australian academic Vita McLelland. His journey is conducted in the context of his not yet assuaged grief for his wife, and of his haunted suspicions about his father's complicity in the horrors of wartime Germany. Peter Pierce (2004) has identified some of Miller's enduring preoccupations: 'solitariness', 'artful evocations of the visceral', tensions between ancestry, freedom and exile, and the indeterminacy of memory. While many of these recur in Landscape, I focus in this paper on how the theme of time is exercised in this novel, with its spare but concentrated prose and apparently straightforward narration. How does Landscape of Farewell draw us inwards as well as onwards, into an intricately nested set of temporalities that speak to selfhood, truth and reparation, to cross-cultural translation, to mortality and relinquishment, and to the intractable terrain of moral debate about the past? What does Miller's mode of narration bring to familiar questions, in Australian culture, of place and belonging?' (Source: http://sydney.edu.au/arts/australian_literature/images/content/conferences/miller_abstracts2.pdf)
Last amended 15 Sep 2009 11:13:11
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