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'In his 1987 poem "Louvres" Les Murray speaks of journeys to 'the three quarters of our continent/set aside for mystic poetry" (2002, 239), a very different reading of Australia's inner space to A.D. Hope's 1939 vision of it as '[t]he Arabian desert of the human mind" (1966, 13) In this paper I review the opposed, contradictory ways in which the inner space of Australia has been perceived by Australian writers, and note changes in those literary perceptions, especially in the last fifty years. In that time what was routinely categerised, by Patrick White among others, as the "Dead heart" (1974, 94) - the disappointing desert encountered by nineteenth=century European explorers looking for another America -has been re-mythologised as the "Red Centre," the symbolic, living heart of the continent. What Barcroft Boake's 1897 poem hauntingly portrayed as out where the dead men lie" (140,-2) is now more commonly imagined as a site of spiritual exploration and psychic renewal, a place where Aboriginal identification with the land is respected and even shared. This change was powerfully symbolised in 1985 by the return to the traditional Anangu owners of the title deeds to the renamed Uluru, the great stone sited at the centre of the continent; but while this re-mythologising has been increasingly influential in literary readings, older, more negative constructions of that space as hostile and sterile have persisted, so that contradictory attitudes towards the inner space of Australia continue to be expressed. In reviewing a selection of those readings, I am conscious that they both distort and influence broader cultural perceptions. I am also aware that literary reconstructions of the past reflect both the attitudes of the time depicted and the current attitudes of the writer, and that separating the two is seldom simple. Finally, I am conscious of the connections between literary readings and those in art and film of the kind documented by Roslynn Hanes in her 1998 study Seeking the Centre: the Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film, and those in television and advertising. I have however, with the exception of the Postscript, limited my paper to literary readings, with an emphasis on works published since Haynes's study.' (Author's abstract p. 45)
Notes
-
Epigraph:
Her beauty and her error
The wide brown land for me
(Dorothea Mackellar 1971, 4)
"A pity that you huddle," said the German. "Your country is of great subtlety"
(Patrick White 1957, 13)
Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie
(Blaise Pascal/Randolf Stow 1958, 60)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 28 Jun 2011 13:15:22
45-53
The Wide Brown Land : Literary Readings of Space and the Australian Continent
Subjects:
- The Commandant 1975 single work novel
- Where the Dead Men Lie, and Other Poems 1897 selected work poetry
- Spirit in Exile : Peter Porter and His Poetry 1991 selected work criticism biography
- Drylands : A Book for the World's Last Reader 1999 single work novel
- Oscar and Lucinda 1988 single work novel
- His Natural Life 1870-1872 single work novel
- Down Home : Revisiting Tasmania 1988 selected work prose autobiography criticism
- Cunnamulla 2000 single work film/TV
- The Timeless Land 1941 single work novel
- Xavier Herbert (1901-1984) 2002 single work biography
- We of the Never-Never 1908 single work novel
- Three Dog Night 2003 single work novel
- The Deserted Village? Thea Astley's Drylands 2002 single work criticism
- Unemployed at Last 1986 single work poetry
- The Wild Colonial Boy--The Making of Colonial Legends in David Malouf's 'The Conservations at Curlow Creek' 2000 single work criticism
- Seeking the Centre : The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film 1998 single work criticism
- Poor Fellow My Country 1975 single work novel
- Unnatural Lives : Studies in Australian Fiction about the Convicts, from James Tucker to Patrick White 1983 single work criticism
- Collected Poems 1930-1965 1966 selected work poetry
- Oyster 1996 single work novel
- Japanese Story 2002 single work film/TV
- Clean Straw for Nothing : A Novel 1969 single work novel
- The Boy in the Bush 1924 single work novel
- The Poems of Dorothea Mackellar 1971 collected work poetry
- The Conversations at Curlow Creek 1996 single work novel
- Remembering Babylon 1993 single work novel
- Journey to the Stone Country 2002 single work novel
- A Working Forest : Selected Prose 1997 selected work prose autobiography review column criticism obituary
- Collected Poems : 1961-2002 2002 selected work poetry
- Coonardoo : The Well in the Shadow 1928 single work novel
- Reading Tim Winton 1993 anthology criticism interview
- To the Islands 1958 single work novel
- Visitants 1979 single work novel
- Utopian and Dystopian Impulses in Australia 2003 single work criticism
- The Cockatoos : Shorter Novels and Stories 1974 selected work short story
- A Fringe of Leaves 1976 single work novel
- Voss : A Novel 1957 single work novel
- Marcus Clarke 1977 single work criticism
- Dirt Music 2001 single work novel
- The Riders 1994 single work novel
- Collected Poems 1942-1985 1994 selected work poetry
- Uluru, South West Northern Territory, Southern Northern Territory, Northern Territory,
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