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David Malouf's Haunted Writing single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 David Malouf's Haunted Writing
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'The two novels this paper focuses on, Remembering Babylon and The Conversations at Curlow Creek, testify to David Malouf's ongoing 'dialogue with Australia'. Published in 1993 and 1996, two centuries after the arrival of the First Fleet of convicts, they engage with crucial issues in a postcolonial Australia which still has to negotiate its existential uncertainty. By returning to the first half of the nineteenth century, the narratives face the ghosts of the past which have haunted Australia, notably the stain of its origins as a penal colony: a sense of exile to the edge of the world is combined with the legacy of historical wrongs, the atrocities of the convict system and the devastating impact of colonization on the Aboriginal peoples - from dispossession to massacre or assimilationist policies which have engendered social alienation and spiritual dislocation.' (p. 270)

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    y separately published work icon Postcolonial Ghosts Fantômes post-coloniaux Melanie Joseph-Vilain (editor), Judith Misrahi-Barak (editor), Montpellier : Universitaires de la Mediterranee , 2010 Z1801502 2010 anthology poetry criticism 'As liminal beings, ghosts seem particularly appropriate to define, question or challenge hybrid cultures where several, seemingly irreconcilable, identities coexist. The present volume wonders how they manifest themselves in the English-speaking world, and whether there is a specifically postcolonial kind of haunting. The twenty-two articles deal with textual, translational or historical ghosts, and take us to Canada, Australia, Africa, India or the Caribbean. Poems by Gerry Turcotte literally haunt the volume, which thus juxtaposes theory and practice in a dynamic and fruitful way.' (Publisher's blurb). Montpellier : Universitaires de la Mediterranee , 2010 pg. 269-285
Last amended 21 Dec 2011 09:53:36
269-285 David Malouf's Haunted Writingsmall AustLit logo
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