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'Rolf Boldrewood's novel Robbery Under Arms is known for its action, adventure and frank depiction of life in Australia during the gold rush. It is also known for its didacticism, which critics tend to find disagreeable (Green 257; Rosenberg 488; Dowsley 75; Turner 240). Despite this recognition, the scholarship that explores the novel's didactic nature is limited to religious scholars like Veronica Brady, who suggests that Dick's narrative represents a surrender to cultural norms rather than an allegory symbolizing a genuine spiritual transformation (41). This paper, however, seeks to create a new discussion that will draw out the Christian-centered 'allegorical tendencies' in Robbery Under Arms.' (Author's introduction)
Notes
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Epigraph: I thought how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion since childhood.[..] The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all this things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.
-C.S. Lewis, 'Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said'
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 25 Jul 2012 14:56:36
Subjects:
- Robbery Under Arms : A Story of Life and Adventure in the Bush and in the Goldfields of Australia 1882 single work novel
- Robbery Under Arms : A Re-assessment 1968 single work
- A History of Australian Literature, Pure and Applied : A Critical Review of All Forms of Literature Produced in Australia from the First Books Published After the Arrival of the First Fleet Until 1950, with Short Accounts of Later Publications Up to 1960 1961 single work criticism
- Rolf Boldrewood 1968 single work biography
- Cultural Symbolism in "Robbery Under Arms" 1978 single work criticism
- Ripping Yarns, Ideology, and Robbery Under Arms 1989 single work criticism
- The Historical Basis of 'Robbery Under Arms' 1965 single work criticism
- Religious Attitudes in Australian Literature in the 1890s 1979 single work thesis
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