Borderlands: New Peripheries of Pastoral in Contemporary Australian Fiction ...
Critical discussions of Australian pastoral literature have traditionally concentrated on twentieth century non-Indigenous poets and the possibilities of a white-settler poetics of place. Radical pastoral poet John Kinsella has parodied this preoccupation with settler-belonging, arguing that, the “n...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
2022
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.25907/00123 https://research.usc.edu.au/esploro/outputs/doctoral/99608208302621 |
| Summary: | Critical discussions of Australian pastoral literature have traditionally concentrated on twentieth century non-Indigenous poets and the possibilities of a white-settler poetics of place. Radical pastoral poet John Kinsella has parodied this preoccupation with settler-belonging, arguing that, the “nationalistic agenda in Australian literary criticism, to create a distinct and authentically Australian landscape in poetry, has been as forced as trying to turn a gum tree into an evergreen” (Australian Pastoral 365). Placing the traditional preoccupation with poetry and settler-belonging to one side, this research makes an original contribution to studies of Australian pastoral by prioritising First Nations perspectives and by considering the more urgent, dystopian and at times apocalyptic depictions of the Australian farm emerging in contemporary rural fiction. ... : In the exegetical component, I review current literature regarding the Australian pastoral and conduct a detailed analysis of five works of contemporary fiction, beginning with two novels by First Nations writers: Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip (2018) and Kim Scott’s Taboo (2017), followed by Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things (2015), Mireille Juchau’s The World Without Us (2015) and James Bradley’s Clade (2015). A close-reading of these novels reveals a politically-charged rural literature that moves beyond the ubiquitous anti-pastoral by offering more empowering and celebratory images of First Nations sovereignty, female agency and sustainable futures. I ask: how do we attend to and extend upon the increasingly radical, diverse and agency-centred engagements with pastoral emerging in contemporary Australian fiction? By centralising agency and actively decolonising the farm, these novels evoke what Terry Gifford has defined as “post-pastoral”: rural literature that reveals the violence of ... |
|---|