AustLit

'R.H. Morrieson’s fiction has received little scholarly analysis in New Zealand, but when it has, it has been common to consider it as part of a tradition emerging during the middle decades of the twentieth century that sought new modes of writing with which to best express the realities of a post-World War II world. Peter Simpson argues that as a post-provincial novel, Morrieson’s The Scarecrow (1963) ‘turns the typical pattern of provincial fiction – sympathetic individual versus hostile society – upside down. The isolated individual – the Scarecrow – is viewed as a threat to the community from outside’ (1982: 59). Yet the pattern that Simpson notes here as belonging to the post-provincial novel belongs to another mode of fiction: the Gothic, which frequently involves a communal effort to vanquish an evil threat, such as in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). By considering The Scarecrow as a Gothic novel, post-provincial writing in New Zealand can be seen as not just building on a local tradition of literary realism, but as engaging with a popular international tradition as well.'' (Publication abstract)