AustLit logo
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 The ‘Weight’ of Words in Alexis Wright’s Works
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Alexis Wright has a unique way of appropriating and adapting the English language to an indigenous world vision in the manner in which she reactivates dead metaphors, mixes literal and figurative meanings, and uses elements of nature and artifacts in her similes and comparisons. She thus investigates the way words in English, the language of the colonizer, may have actual impact on her characters, on the world they inhabit, and eventually, on her readers. Her metaphors (from Greek meta-pherein, “carrying from one place to another”) function to displace a Eurocentric world vision and offer an alter/Native connection with the community and Country. This article demonstrates that Wright creates and re-creates an organic world in which everything is unified, and animate—a world which has been severely damaged by colonialism. Revisiting the notions of ownership and Law, she conceives of a way to integrate indigenous thought within the language of the colonizer in writing about the land, the sea, and the sky, a language she transforms into an expression of Country, both tangible and holy.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 16 Apr 2021 12:48:53
http://www.australianstudies.eu/?p=1487 The ‘Weight’ of Words in Alexis Wright’s Workssmall AustLit logo Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia
X