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'The depiction of aboriginals in early Australian literature, i.e., that written before 1850, resembles in many respects their pictorial depiction as outlined by Bernard Smith in European Vision and the South Pacific. Writers who attempted the longer literary forms on Australian themes — the epic poem or the novel — usually, like the landscape artists, placed the aboriginal to one side. He was part of the exotic background, representing for the post the old order which was rapidly giving way to the march of civilization, or, along with bushrangers, fire and Rood, providing the fiction writer with the necessary "adventures" to break up the drab monotony of outback life. Certain shorter pieces of prose and verse focused more directly on the aboriginal, In these he was often either refined and classicalized along the "noble savage" lines of Blake's engraving of an aboriginal family, or caricatured as a comic specimen of brute creation. During the eighteen—forties there are signs of a third, more realistic and anthropological, approach with the incorporation of aboriginal words into poems and attempts at detailed descriptions of their customs in prose, though still with traces of the old simplifications in the directions of refinement or comedy.' (Publication abstract)
Notes
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This paper was presented at Monash University's inaugural conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature at May 1978.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- Ode for the Queen's Birth Day, 1811 1811 single work poetry
- The Native's Lament 1826 single work poetry
- The Gin 1831 single work poetry
- The Aboriginal Mother 1838 single work poetry
- The Stranger 1975 single work poetry
- Aboriginal Song 1844 single work poetry
- Lament for the Native 1843 single work poetry
- The Aborigine's Complaint 1844 single work poetry
- Answer to the Aborigine's Complaint 1844 single work poetry
- The Beautiful Squatter 1845 single work poetry
- The Murdered Wild Boy : An Old Settler's Story 1844 single work poetry
- Ned Connor : A Tale of the Bush 1846 single work poetry
- Numskulta and Rumtulta : An Ebonian eclogue 1843 single work poetry
- Incantation Scene 1839 single work poetry
- 1830s
- 1840s
- 1800s
- 1810s
- 1820s