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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'There is no doubt about the achievement of Patrick White (1912-90). The substantial corpus of books is there - twelve novels, three collections of stories, the plays, the autobiography. He is an Australian writer who is known internationally. But though he is well known, when we come to ask what he is known for, it is not so easy to get a succinct answer. What are his novels about? Are they about anything other than themselves? To define what White is we have to begin by defining what he is not; and this leads immediately into the nature of modernism. For White is the great Australian modernist. And modernism as an artistic movement is very much a system of exclusions. Much of the impulse of modernism was a denial of preceding traditions and a refusal of certain possibilities of continuity. The way in which modernism most immediately proclaimed itself was in its refusal of what had been the dominant nineteenth century mode of realism. If modernism was to be new, then it had to deny the existing, make it seem old and outdated. So that concern with the knowable, with recognizable psychological motivation, with the inventory of named objects, with causality and morality, is abandoned.' (Introduction)
Notes
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Paper presented to the University of Newcastle and Mattara Festival Patrick White Conference in 1987 and to the Yale University Perceptions of a Culture Conference in 1988
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Locating Voss within Change, Conflict and Convergence
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Change - Conflict and Convergence : Austral-Asian Scenarios 2010; (p. 125-139) 'This article attempts to locate Patrick White's Voss within postcolonial and postmodern discourse, focussing on themes of identity, space, history and belonging. Written in 1957, the test is a fusion of fact and fiction and in its intermingling of genres accommodates varying ideas as well as responses. Underlying the narrative is a determined attempt by White to comprehend past narratives of the Australian continent and its inhabitants so as to grasp some understandings about them and possibly reconstitute a new world.' (p. 125)
-
Locating Voss within Change, Conflict and Convergence
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Change - Conflict and Convergence : Austral-Asian Scenarios 2010; (p. 125-139) 'This article attempts to locate Patrick White's Voss within postcolonial and postmodern discourse, focussing on themes of identity, space, history and belonging. Written in 1957, the test is a fusion of fact and fiction and in its intermingling of genres accommodates varying ideas as well as responses. Underlying the narrative is a determined attempt by White to comprehend past narratives of the Australian continent and its inhabitants so as to grasp some understandings about them and possibly reconstitute a new world.' (p. 125)
Last amended 23 May 2023 07:08:41
221-231
The Politics of Modernism
24-33
The Politics of Modernism
Subjects:
- The Vivisector 1970 single work novel
- Riders in the Chariot 1961 single work novel
- Voss : A Novel 1957 single work novel
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