AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Also sound recording.
- Dyslexic edition.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
Sublime Wilderness : Embracing the Non-Human in Richard Flanagan’s Tasmania
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Climate and Crises : Magical Realism as Environmental Discourse 2019; (p. 73-94) 'Narrator Sid Hammet's opening remark in Gould's Book of Fish (2001) encapsulates a recurring theme of Richard Flanagan's fiction: the perception of human existence as something bigger than Western materialism and urban existence, of anthropic life as one element within a profound, mysterious cosmos. Flanagan conveys this transcendental awareness through a style of writing that frequently involves magical realist elements and which is inextricably tied to a philosophy based on ecology and a connection to the Tasmanian landscape, a philosophy influenced by Indigenous Tasmanians and their precolonial culture. In particular, Flanagan blends the magical and the environmental through his persistent leitmotif of wilderness, specifically Tasmania's unique and remote South-West Wilderness.' (Introduction)
-
y
The 'Imagined Sound' of Australian Literature and Music
London
:
Anthem Press
,
2019
18679009
2019
multi chapter work
criticism
'‘Imagined Sound’ is a unique cartography of the artistic, historical and political forces that have informed the post-World War II representation of Australian landscapes. It is the first book to formulate the unique methodology of ‘imagined sound’, a new way to read and listen to literature and music that moves beyond the dominance of the visual, the colonial mode of knowing, controlling and imagining Australian space. Emphasising sound and listening, this approach draws out and re-examines the key narratives that shape and are shaped by Australian landscapes and histories, stories of first contact, frontier violence, the explorer journey, the convict experience, non-Indigenous belonging, Pacific identity and contemporary Indigenous Dreaming. ‘Imagined Sound’ offers a compelling analysis of how these narratives are reharmonised in key works of literature and music.
'To listen to and read imagined sound is to examine how works of literature and music evoke and critique landscapes and histories using sound. It is imagined sound because it is created by descriptive language and imaginative thought, and is as such an extension of the range of heard sound. The concept is inspired by Benedict Anderson’s key study of nationalism, ‘Imagined Communities’ (1983). Discussing official (and unofficial) national anthems, Anderson argues the imagined sound of these songs connects us all. This conception of sound operates in two ways: it places the listener within ‘the nation’ and it bypasses the problem of both space and time, enabling listeners from across a vast space to, simultaneously, become one. Following Anderson, imagined sound emphasises the importance of the imagination in the formation of landscapes and communities, and in the telling and retelling of histories.
'’Imagined Sound’ encounters the different forms and tonalities of imagined sound – the soundscape, refrain, song, lyric, scream, voice and noise ¬– in novels, poems, art music, folk, rock, jazz and a film clip. To listen to these imagined sounds is to encounter the diverse ways that writers and musicians have reimagined and remapped Australian colonial/postcolonial histories, landscapes and mythologies. Imagined sound links the past to the present, enabling colonial landscapes and traumas to haunt the postcolonial; it carries and expresses highly personal and interior experiences and emotions; and it links people to the landscapes they inhabit and to the narratives and myths that give place meaning. As a reading and listening practice imagined sound pursues the unresolved conflicts that echo across the haunted soundscapes connecting the colonial past to the postcolonial present. The seeds of regeneration also bear fruit as writers and musicians imagine the future. ‘Imagined Sound’ fuses the spirit of close reading common to literary studies and the score analysis familiar to musicology with ideas from sound studies, philosophy, Island studies and postcolonial studies.' (Publication summary)
-
Groundwater as Hyperobject
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Mosaic , June vol. 52 no. 2 2019; (p. 1-16)'The essay explores ideas about groundwater in terms of its characteristics as a hyperobject. Key hydrogeology concepts and the conflicts and dilemmas in uses and abuses of groundwater in Australia underpin a search for the metaphorical potency of groundwater. Literature uncovers how allegorical tones of groundwater may be expressed.' (Publication abstract)
-
Richard Flanagan's "Post-post" and the Mapping of the Altermodern
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 103-117) -
Spatial Anxieties: Tourists, Settlers and Tasmania's Affective Economies of Belonging in 'A Terrible Beauty', 'Death of a River Guide' and 'Gould's Book of Fish'
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 73-85)
-
Adrift on River of Life
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 17-18 December 1994; (p. rev 6)
— Review of The Borrowed Girl 1994 single work novel ; Death of a River Guide 1994 single work novel -
Forecasts
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Bookseller & Publisher , November vol. 74 no. 1053 1994; (p. 26-27)
— Review of Death of a River Guide 1994 single work novel -
Meet the Great Tasmanian Novel
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: The Mercury , 5 December 1994; (p. 31)
— Review of Death of a River Guide 1994 single work novel -
Untitled
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: New Librarian , November vol. 1 no. 9 1994; (p. 36)
— Review of Death of a River Guide 1994 single work novel -
`I, Aljaz Cosini, River Guide...'
1994
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December-January (1994-1995) no. 167 1994; (p. 7-8)
— Review of Death of a River Guide 1994 single work novel -
Taking the Waters : Abjection and Homecoming in The Shipping News and Death of a River Guide
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , vol. 41 no. 1 2006; (p. 93-109) The article argues that Annie Proulx's The Shipping News and Flanagan's Death of a River Guide 'construct Newfoundland and Tasmania as havens from the disorienting effects of postmodernism', and investigates 'how the two narratives bring their misfit protagonists back to the islands of their forefathers to undergo a traumatic but effective "process" of homecoming' (93). -
Nationalism, Reconciliation, and the Cultural Genealogy of Magic in Richard Flanagan's Death of a River Guide
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , vol. 42 no. 1 2007; (p. 117-129) The author argues that Flanagan's Death of a River Guide need not be read as 'appropriation of Aboriginal culture and spirituality on the part of a white settler writer living in Australia.' -
Wet, in the Mindscape of the Dry: Water Tanks as Nature/Culture Signifiers
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Words on Water: Literary and Cultural Representations 2008; (p. 23-38) The author investigates the impact of Australian literature and European attitudes on water conservation in Australia. -
Careful Mapping: Cassandra Pybus and Richard Flanagan Redraw Tasmania
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Who Cares? 2007; (p. 107-123) -
Australian Masculinities
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Messengers of Eros : Representations of Sex in Australian Writing 2009; (p. 97-117) This criticism looks at the forms of maleness celebrated by Australian writers and how that 'maleness' is not just constructed by men. Women, Pons argues, contribute to this construction.
Awards
- 1996 winner Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards — Award for Fiction
- 1995 shortlisted NBC Banjo Awards — NBC Banjo Award for Fiction
- 1995 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Sheaffer Pen Prize for First Fiction
- 1995 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- Southwest Tasmania, Tasmania,
- Franklin River, Southwest Tasmania, Tasmania,