Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This is the first published collection of critical essays on the work of Kate Grenville, one of Australia's most important contemporary writers. Grenville has been acclaimed for her novels, winning numerous national and international prizes including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Her novels are marked by sharp observations of outsider figures who are often under pressure to conform to society's norms. More recently, she has written novels set in Australia's past, revisiting and re-imagining colonial encounters between settlers and Indigenous Australians. This collection of essays includes a scholarly introduction and three new essays that reflect on Grenville's work in relation to her approach to feminism, her role as public intellectual and her books on writing. The other nine essays provide analyses of each of her novels published to date, from the early success of Lilian's Story and Dreamhouse to the most recently published novel, The Lieutenant.' (Publisher's blurb)

Her work has been the subject of some debate and this is reflected in a number of the essays published here, most particularly with regard to her most successful novel to date, The Secret River. This intellectual engagement with important contemporary issues is a mark of Grenville's fiction, testament to her own analysis of the vital role of writers in uncertain times. She has suggested that "writers have ways of going into the darkest places, taking readers with them and coming out safely." This volume attests to Grenville's own significance as a writer in a time of change and to the value of her novels as indices of that change and in "lighting dark places."

Contents

* Contents derived from the Amsterdam,
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Netherlands,
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Western Europe, Europe,
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New York (City), New York (State),
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United States of America (USA),
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Americas,
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Rodopi , 2010 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Reading Feminism in Kate Grenville’s Fiction, Susan Sheridan , single work criticism (p. 1-15)
Kate Grenville as Public Intellectual, Brigid Rooney , single work criticism (p. 18-38)
Author! Author! The Two Faces of Kate Grenville, Elizabeth McMahon , single work criticism (p. 39-54)
Madness and Power : Lilian’s Story and the Decolonized Body, Bill Ashcroft , single work criticism
'Bill Ashcroft has provided a new reading of Lilian's Story that emphasizes the resistant power of narrative itself, a reading that uses postcolonial theory to tease out the ways in which Lilian's feminist appropriation of power (most dramatically from her father Albion, as representative of patriarchal Darwinian and imperial discourse and practices) enables her to "find" both her body and her voice...' (Kossew, 'Introduction' xv-xvi)
(p. 55-72)
"Africa and Australia" Revisited" Reading Kate Grenville's Joan Makes History, Kwaku Larbi Korang , single work criticism
Korang engages with Grenville's novel Joan Makes History from the perspective of his 'reading self', that is 'African, male, non-white and non-Australian'. Through this experience, he discovers that 'against the ironic necessity of accepting that each time we travel we discover ourselves only, we must posit the freedom to make the disclaimer, postcolonially, that in our worldly encounters we are enjoined to discover in ourselves other selves.'
(p. 73-92)
'Mobility Is the Key' : Bodies, Boundaries and Movement in Kate Grenville's "Lilian's Story", Ruth Barcan , single work criticism (p. 93-118)
Homeless and Foreign : The Heroines of Lilian's Story and Dreamhouse, Kate Livett , single work criticism
'Kate Livett's essay concerns the lens of 'the tragic'. This, she argues, enables a reading of Thornhill as a tragically flawed character and provides a fitting genre fro Grenville's empathetic imagination.' (Kossew, 'Introduction' xix)
(p. 119-134)
"Impossible Speech" and the Burden of Translation : Lilian's Story from Page to Screen, Alice Healy , single work criticism

In Lilian's Story, Lilian 'claims, "I have never cultivated the burden of memory." This essay extends Lilian's suggestion in order to problematise the "burden of translation" and its significance for recent ideas of history as performance, variously applied by writers from Greg Dening to Judith Butler.' (p.162) Further, 'this essay examines the translation from novel to film, and its significance to ideas of the "re-staging" of history through performance.' (p.164)

(p. 135-152)
Constructions of Nation and Gender in The Idea of Perfection, Sue Kossew , single work criticism (p. 153-166)
Poison in the Flour : Kate Grenville's The Secret River Poison in the Flour, Eleanor Collins , single work criticism (p. 167-178)
Note: Poison in the Flour : Kate Grenville's The Secret River
History, Fiction and The Secret River, Sarah Pinto , single work criticism
'In this essay, Sarah Pinto is concerned with the historical novel's imaginative re-creation of historical moments and figures. She considers Grenville's fascination with archival research and with the processes of historical investigation in the context of the seemingly unceasing public debates about The Secret River as a way of explaining why historians felt the need to respond to t he novel. At stake, she suggests, were questions about the ways in which history is told and, in the process, how accounts of history by be differentiated from Historical fiction. Indeed, it is the very notion of empathy that some historians regarded as 'unhistorical'. Pinto argues that the rivalry between history and fiction, and history's claim to have access to a verifiable past, have tended to shut down what could and should be a productiove exchange between the two.'( Kossew, 'Introduction' xix)
(p. 179-198)
Learning from Each Other : Language, Authority, and Authenticity in Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant, Lynette Russell , single work criticism
'Lynette Russell, in her essay agrees the 'Grenville's novels can be regarded as part of a process of wider reconciliation. Russell's own lack of Aboriginal language and attempts to learn it have led her to identity strongly with the characters in The Lieutenant and, in her essay on the novel, she argues for a reading that explores the role of language in mediating the friendship between black and white Australia. For, she suggests, the stories from the past which novelists like Grenville have uncovered that deal with both that deal with both positive and negative engagements between settler and Indigenous peoples are 'stories that belong to both" groups, the telling and retelling of which "ought to be seen as an exercise in reconciliation."' ( Kossew, 'Introduction', xx)
(p. 199-210)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Amsterdam,
      c
      Netherlands,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Rodopi ,
      2010 .
      Extent: xxi, 264pp.
      Note/s:
      • Introduction by Sue Kossew.
      • Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-250) and index.
      ISBN: 9042032855 (hbk), 9789042032859 (hbk)
      Series: y separately published work icon Cross/Cultures Cross/cultures : Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English Geoffrey V. Davis (editor), Hena Maes-Jelinek (editor), Gordon Collier (editor), Rodopi (publisher), Amsterdam New York (City) : Rodopi , Z1219090 series - publisher Number in series: 131

Works about this Work

[Review] Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville. Kate Mitchell , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 112-114)

— Review of Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville 2010 anthology criticism
[Review] Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville. Natalie Quinlivann , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011;

— Review of Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville 2010 anthology criticism
[Review] Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville. Natalie Quinlivann , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011;

— Review of Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville 2010 anthology criticism
[Review] Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville. Kate Mitchell , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , June vol. 26 no. 2 2011; (p. 112-114)

— Review of Lighting Dark Places : Essays on Kate Grenville 2010 anthology criticism
Last amended 5 Apr 2019 13:43:34
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