Latest Issues
Notes
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Only literary material within AustLit's scope individually indexed. Other material in this issue includes:
Place Remembered: Unearthing Hidden Histories in Armidale Aboriginal Community Garden by Kate Wright
In Search of Lost Time: Fiction, Archaeology and the Elusive Subject of Prehistory by Joshua Mostafa
Karma Eddison-Cogan: Review of Tinkering: Australians Reinvent DIY Culture, by Katherine Wilson
Erica Seccombe: Review of Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity, by Anne Elias
Contents
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Barron Field’s Terra Nullius Operation,
single work
criticism
'Barron Field, who is today a largely forgotten figure, was from 1817 to 1824 the highest judge in New South Wales. His place in literary history rests on his First Fruits of Australian Poetry of 1819, which, as the title announces, was the first book of poetry to be published in this country. But by most accounts Field was a mediocre judge and a worse poet. John McLaren writes of the legal career that ‘Field’s record as a judge could best be described as mercurial, a reflection of his conservative belief system, a commitment to the culture of English law, and an opportunistic streak in his character…. Field’s counsel was not invariably sound or in keeping with the Colonial Office’s understanding of the legal proprieties’ (144). As for his poetry, even the colonial anthologists were wary of Field’s inclusion, although Vivian Smith has more recently been generous enough to judge Field’s poem ‘The Kangaroo’ to be ‘an exuberant oddity’ (74). Field also appears in a number of historical studies of colonial science and culture, where he tends however to remain a minor and rather ambiguous figure (Bernard Smith; Carter).' (Introduction)
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Science/Literature: The Interface,
single work
criticism
'This special section of the Australian Humanities Review emerged from the Literary Studies Convention at the Australian National University from 3-7 July 2018. As a conference which brought together Australia’s four major literary studies associations, it showcased a range of approaches to literary scholarship to discuss ‘the literary as an interface between different forms of knowledge and processes of knowledge formation, looking at questions of how and through what means the literary is communicated, represented, negotiated, and remade’. One of the approaches prompted by this theme was the ways in which literature can translate, communicate, or re-imagine scientific knowledge. This seemed particularly apt given that one of the definitions of ‘interface’ is ‘an apparatus designed to connect two scientific instruments so that they can be operated jointly’ (Oxford English Dictionary), for example, two different computer operating systems. In other words, the interface is the meeting place which allows translation to occur.' (Introduction)
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Arboreal Beings : Reading to Redress Plant Blindness,
single work
criticism
A recent census of Earth's biomass (the total mass of organisms in a given area) indicates that plants, which constitute approximately 80 percent of all biomass, have been reduced by half since the beginning of human civilisation (Bar-On, Phillips and Milo). To put this in plain terms, as geobiologist Hope Jahren does in her engaging memoir Lab Girl: A Story of Trees, Science and Love, ‘since 1990 we have created more than eight billion new [tree] stumps. If we continue to fell healthy trees at this rate, less than six hundred years from now, every tree on the planet will have been reduced to a stump’ (n.p.). If one compares six hundred years to 470 million years (the time which plants have been on earth), one gains a sense of the rapid pace of deforestation: it will be 120 generations (if a generation is measured as twenty-five years), as opposed to nearly nineteen million generations.' (Introduction)
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The Matter of Fact : Science and Identity in Contemporary Australian Literature,
single work
criticism
'To pursue ‘knowledge per se’, to unlock ‘the secrets of the organism’ and to act as an explorer ‘not of untrodden lands, perhaps, but of the mysteries of nature’—these are the reasons why the naturalist William Caldwell travels to Australia in Nicholas Drayson’s 2007 novel Love and the Platypus (9, 59, 144). Caldwell’s research is ‘purely platypusical’ (98): he aims to determine whether the platypus really does lay eggs. The ‘spirit of discovery—that was why he was here, was it not?’ (3) The spirit of discovery and the obsessive nature of his scientific enquiry appear to characterise Drayson’s protagonist as a scientist. However, as I hope to show in this paper, the definition of the literary scientist-protagonist—or its stereotype, in the words of Roslynn Haynes—is open for debate when it comes to the practice of science in fiction. To prove my point, I investigate how the practice of science in contemporary Australian fiction intertwines with identity narratives. As shown in the following, these narratives revolve around the reasons and ambitions of fictional protagonists to engage with science.' (Introduction)
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[Review] Like Nothing on This Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt and Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity,
single work
review
— Review of Like Nothing on This Earth : A Literary History of the Wheatbelt 2017 multi chapter work criticism ; Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity 2018 multi chapter work criticism ;'In his landmark work of spatial history The Road to Botany Bay (1988), Paul Carter delineates the close relationship between Australian space and language. The modern settler nation was inaugurated not only through the invaders’ physical presence but also their assertion of linguistic control through written documentation. Accordingly, space, place and land often frame investigations of settler Australian literature and culture. Despite this, however, the transnational fervour for place-based literary studies and literary geography has not produced an abundance of site-specific critical monographs on place in Australian literature. In this context, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth’s Like Nothing on This Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt (UWAP, 2017) and Brigid Rooney’s Suburban Space, The Novel and Australian Modernity (Anthem, 2018) are significant recent works of Australian scholarship, offering careful and compelling critical investigations of the complex meaning-making relations of space, place and text.' (Introduction)
