AustLit
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.
Latest Issues
Notes
-
Dedicated with a poem to Marley Denwood.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Jack Lindsay, Socialist Humanism and the Communist Historical Novel
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Review of English Studies , April vol. 66 no. 274 2015; 'This article recovers a missing chapter in the history of the historical novel: the concerted reactivation of the genre within the culture of international Communism in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Rehabilitating the career of the Australian-born British Communist, Jack Lindsay, it folds his role as a theorist and practitioner of the historical novel into a transnational account of the genre’s mid-century revival. Between the convocation of the Popular Front in 1935 and the emergence of the New Left after 1956, the historical novel travelled the circuits of international Communist culture, transforming the practice of the novel and training the habits of historical attention we have come to know as ‘history from below’. In the rise of radical social history and of magical realism as the recognizable form of a new ‘world’ novel, the Communist historical novel played a crucial mediating role. Drawing on Lindsay’s private papers, this article reconstructs his place within the movement culture of British Communism, while a close reading of his last novel, Thunder Underground (1965), ties the genre he pioneered to the politics of socialist humanism and to the practice of British cultural Marxism. (Publication summary) -
The Historical Novel: Jack Lindsay's `1649 : A Novel of a Year'
1984
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Culture and History : Essays Presented to Jack Lindsay 1984; (p. 160-179) Studies in Classic Australian Fiction 1997; (p. 134-159) 'In Fanfrolico and After Jack Lindsay discusses the historical novels he began to write in the mid 1930s. 'I still, however, could not handle the contemporary scene.'191 When contemporary society proves too resistant, then a recourse to history can be a way of approaching it from another direction, an approach to catch it off guard, unprotected. So it was in the mid-seventeenth century, both before the English Revolution and in the Restoration aftermath of repression, that poets turned to Old Testament themes: to search for a model that would illuminate the current complexities; and to evade the complex of repressions that effectively discouraged an accurate expression of the present moment. To turn to the historical is not to flee in escapism from the present, but to confront it by a negation that will allow a true perception of the negated present to emerge dialectically. The inexpressible crisis of the nineteen-thirties thus finds itself revealed in Lindsay's 1649: A Novel of A Year (1938);192 the emergent centralized, military-based, repressive Junto of Cromwell images the emergent dictatorships and national governments and the destruction of the radical impulses of cooperation and freedom at this moment in twentieth-century history.' (Introduction)
-
The Historical Novel: Jack Lindsay's `1649 : A Novel of a Year'
1984
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Culture and History : Essays Presented to Jack Lindsay 1984; (p. 160-179) Studies in Classic Australian Fiction 1997; (p. 134-159) 'In Fanfrolico and After Jack Lindsay discusses the historical novels he began to write in the mid 1930s. 'I still, however, could not handle the contemporary scene.'191 When contemporary society proves too resistant, then a recourse to history can be a way of approaching it from another direction, an approach to catch it off guard, unprotected. So it was in the mid-seventeenth century, both before the English Revolution and in the Restoration aftermath of repression, that poets turned to Old Testament themes: to search for a model that would illuminate the current complexities; and to evade the complex of repressions that effectively discouraged an accurate expression of the present moment. To turn to the historical is not to flee in escapism from the present, but to confront it by a negation that will allow a true perception of the negated present to emerge dialectically. The inexpressible crisis of the nineteen-thirties thus finds itself revealed in Lindsay's 1649: A Novel of A Year (1938);192 the emergent centralized, military-based, repressive Junto of Cromwell images the emergent dictatorships and national governments and the destruction of the radical impulses of cooperation and freedom at this moment in twentieth-century history.' (Introduction) -
Jack Lindsay, Socialist Humanism and the Communist Historical Novel
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Review of English Studies , April vol. 66 no. 274 2015; 'This article recovers a missing chapter in the history of the historical novel: the concerted reactivation of the genre within the culture of international Communism in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Rehabilitating the career of the Australian-born British Communist, Jack Lindsay, it folds his role as a theorist and practitioner of the historical novel into a transnational account of the genre’s mid-century revival. Between the convocation of the Popular Front in 1935 and the emergence of the New Left after 1956, the historical novel travelled the circuits of international Communist culture, transforming the practice of the novel and training the habits of historical attention we have come to know as ‘history from below’. In the rise of radical social history and of magical realism as the recognizable form of a new ‘world’ novel, the Communist historical novel played a crucial mediating role. Drawing on Lindsay’s private papers, this article reconstructs his place within the movement culture of British Communism, while a close reading of his last novel, Thunder Underground (1965), ties the genre he pioneered to the politics of socialist humanism and to the practice of British cultural Marxism. (Publication summary)
Last amended 11 Sep 2015 12:05:16
Subjects:
-
cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
Settings:
- 1640s
Export this record
