Cirrus@Austlit

'In this article, the first on Five Bells, I outline several contexts that will be foundational for subsequent readings of the novel. They include its relationship to Kenneth Slessor's poem; Jones' interest in the French Situationist International and their theories of urbanism and psychogeography; the influence of Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, trauma studies and the trauma novel; and another cluster of themes associated with Pastnernak's Doctor Zhivago, World Literature, cosmopolitanism and global translation.' (Author's abstract)

'An Interview with Gail Jones, one of Australia's best-known authors of literary fiction.'

'This essay argues that Patrick White's commitment to transcendentalism does not involve a dismissal or rejection of corporeality as critics in the past have maintained, but rather focuses on the dissolution of discursive subjectivity. It contends that White's writing in fact advances the ontological, ethical and metaphysical imperative of accepting the body, prioritizing moments of 'transcendence' that may be viewed productively as characters' engulfment within the material world. In its focus on physicality, White's fiction emphasizes dualism in order to problematize it, and even at times to subvert it. Crucial to this aspect of his fiction is his tendency to create characters exhibiting opposing attitudes towards the flesh. This essay explores the manifestation of these opposing attitudes within White's writing. Ultimately, it argues for a reading of White that is sensitive to the strong theme of corporeality in evidence throughout the oeuvre. It suggests that White's attention to the body assists in his rejection of hubris, repudiation, repression and abjection and promotes a human possibility defined by humility, simplicity, compassion and love.' (Author's abstract)

'In this essay, I want to explore the possibility that the success of narrative in stimulating empathy comes from the relation that narrative bears to emotion—where emotion is a kind of proto-narrative that possibly accounts for the structure and range of narratives themselves —and that our familiarity with emotions as micro-narratives results in the motivation of narrative. That is, the resolution of events occurs in terms of feeling rather than other forms of closure, since other forms of closure represent literal endings as, quite simply, the cessation of events whereas emotion achieves its end by being felt or translated in empathetic terms and in ways that endure beyond the formality of the fictive event that ends the narrative. I will be using Kim Scott's Benang: From the Heart (1999) and Peter Carey's Jack Maggs (1997) to discuss narrative and emotions, or the role of emotion in motivating narrative events and the role of narrative in conveying and stirring emotion in the reader.' (Author's abstract)

'This article surveys the short fiction jointly produced by Beatrice Osborne and Hilary Lofting under the names Margaret Fane and Hilary Lofting between 1919 and 1929, in which they create distinctive territories (the western periphery of Sydney, and the contrasting wealthy suburbs around Elizabeth Bay, Double Bay, Potts Point and residential Macquarie Street, and the poorer suburb of Woolloomooloo). The stories foreground a middle way between self-sufficiency and wealth; the natural life is preferred to the artifice and extremes of city life, and all the stories argue for individualism and independence of spirit, characterised by pursuit of an active life, appreciation of beauty, and following one's will rather than conforming to social expectation.' (Author's abstract)

A critical study of Murray Bail's novel, The Pages.

'This article explores representations of the 'Australian cultural cringe' in A.L. McCann's Subtopia (2005) and Justine Ettler's The River Ophelia (1995). The protagonists of these novels express the kind of anti-Australian sentiments that were described by A.A. Phillips in his famous 1950 essay. The antipathy these protagonists feel towards Australia manifests itself in various forms of abjection.

I argue that the most striking aspect of these novels is the fact they have been published at a historical moment in which the whole notion of an 'Australian cultural cringe' seems to have become obsolete. My readings of these texts are energised by a number of questions. These include, do Subtopia and The River Ophelia uncritically portray Australia as crude and parochial? Or is something altogether more complex happening in these novels? What do these novels say about the relationship between national identity, place and the body?

In pursuing the above questions, I will bring to light important and provocative aspects of these two texts that have been overlooked or misread by critics.' (Author's abstract)

'During the 2000s there was considerable discussion about whether Australian book readers were turning in large numbers from fiction to non-fiction genres. This paper contributes empirical research to 'half' of the discussion: analysis of Nielsen BookScan (NB) non-fiction sales data from 2003-2008 to identify non-fiction sales trends, and more specifically, narrative non-fiction reading patterns. These findings provide a rare snapshot of Australian book-buying patterns after the introduction of NB and before the widespread popularity of online retail sites in the late 2000s and, more recently, ebook sales.' (Author's abstract)

'Alexis Wright's Carpentaria is the story of the Phantom family, members of the Pricklebush people, who live in the fictional town of Desperance in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland. It is a long and sprawling carnivalesque novel that offers a cautiously positive outlook for Aboriginal people that also recognises the difficulties of contemporary Aboriginal experience. Carpentaria is not an historical novel in the sense of retelling an historical event; however, the past pervades the narrative as it grapples with the many ways that the past is recorded. It challenges mainstream or dominant representations of Aboriginal people in historiography, language, literature, and politics, to propose new ways of thinking. It suggest that it is the people who are responsible for passing on the essential stories of history and culture to their families as lived history, not the official history held in archives and managed by institutions. The novel's fluid time and ambivalence presents history and historic change outside the usual historical and literary framework. By bringing together myth, history, memory and imagination, by combining humour and seriousness, Dreamtime and Christianity, ambivalence and certainty, and politics and art the novel seeks to switch to a different sense of unity and harmony. But there is a deep sense of ambivalence towards the possibility of a future where good and evil, and black and white are no longer clearly defined and the old rules no longer apply.' (Author's abstract)