AustLit

Positioning the Great Barrier Reef as a 'liminal zone', Taylor examines the writings of E. J. Banfield and Jean Devanny, focusing on the freedoms and marginalisation of life in the 'sea country' and commenting on the writers' representations of the Reef. Taylor argues that 'Banfield's and Devanny's representations of the paradoxical, endlessly fascinating "sea country" provided opportunites for both escape and creativity.' Noting that '[t]heir readers no doubt accompanied them to this threshold', Taylor concludes that readers 'were confronted with unexpected new possibilities for being and doing. Inspired by a place that was psychologically and physically liminal, they could transcend the limited opportunities for dissent that the social system was geared simultaneously to allow and to contain.'