Issue Details: First known date: 2012... 2012 Bobbin Up in the Leseland : Australian Literature in the German Democratic Republic
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The reading nation m the Leseland - or at least distinct reading formations within two separate national politics - remains an important determinant in Nicole Moore and Cristina Spittel's comparative study of the reception of Dorothy Hewett's novel Bobbin Up (1959) in Australia and the German Democratic Republic. These distinct reception histories work 'as revealingly transposed opposites', as between 1949 and 1990 Australian titles published in East Germany formed 'an alternative cannon, a shadowy literary archive that rewrites Australia's post-war cultural history from behind the iron curtain.' In Australia, the networks of production and reception for Bobbin Up were focused on the Australian Book Society and the GDR on that nation's centralised cultural administration. This meant that its readerships in Australia were at once nationally distinctive but internally marginal within the wider culture of the Menzies era. Moore and Spittel's case study is also sensitive to the discursive frames - humanist, universalist, socialist and feminist - which allowed for the transnational mediation of meanings between these two distinct though internally diverse national cultures of reading. They argue that 'Eastern Bloc editions...formed threads along which literary realisation of intensely localised expressive identity, as Bobbin Up so thoroughly is, travelled beyond themselves and their reading worlds.'' (Kirkpatrick, Peter and Dixon, Robert: Introduction xv)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Republics of Letters : Literary Communities in Australia Robert Dixon (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2012 Z1911531 2012 anthology criticism 'Republics of letters: literary communities in Australia is the first book to explore the notion of literary community or literary sociability in relation to Australian literature. It brings together twenty-four scholars from a range of disciplines - literature, history, cultural and women's studies, creative writing and digital humanities - to address some of the key questions about Australian literary communities: how they form, how they change and develop, and how they operate within wider social and cultural contexts, both within Australia and internationally.' (Publisher's blurb)
    Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2012
    pg. 113-126
Last amended 1 Feb 2013 12:39:30
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