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'A shadow, in its most literal sense, is the projection of a silhouette against a surface and the obstruction of direct light from hitting that surface. For writers and artists, the shadows cast by their precursors can be either a welcome influence, one consciously evoked in textual production via homage or bricolage, or can manifest as an intrusive, haunting, prohibitive presence, one which threatens to engulf the successor. Many writers and artists are affected by an anxious and ambiguous relationship with their precursors, while others are energised by this relationship. The role that intertextuality plays in creative production invites interrogation, and this publication explores a range of conscious and unconscious influences informing relations between texts and contexts, between predecessors and successors.
The chapters revolve around intertextual influence, ranging from conscious imitation and intentional allusion to Julia Kristeva's idea of intertextuality. Do all texts contain references to and even quotations from other texts? Do such references help shape how we read? This multidisciplinary work includes chapters on the long shadows cast by Shakespeare, Dante, Scott, Virgil and Ovid, the shadows of colonial precursors on postcolonial successors, the shadows cast over Kipling and Murdoch, and chapters on other writers, dramatists and filmmakers and their relationships with precursor figures. With its focus on intertextual relationships, this book contributes to the thriving fields of adaptation studies and studies of intertextuality' (Publisher website).
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
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Dedication: Dedicated to Syd Harrex
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Epigraph: The more parents the better. For such birth/ there's no dishonour, no pride in scandal/ for being a collective progenitor/ of an infant text that has multiple/ mummies and daddies... ( Syd Harrex, 'Bringing a Book to Life', in Dougie's Ton & 99 Other Sonnets, 2007)
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Epigraph: Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the shadow (T. S. Eliot, 'The Hollow Men').
Contents
* Contents derived from the
Newcastle upon Tyne,
Northumberland,
c
England,c
c
United Kingdom (UK),c
Western Europe,
Europe,:Cambridge Scholars Press
, 2012 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.- The Shadow of the Precursor from Accommodation to Appropriation to Resistance, single work criticism (p. 1-23)
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Vincent Buckley and His Land of No Fathers : The Irish Shadow on His Work,
single work
criticism
(p. 38-47)‘Vincent Buckley maintained that as an Irish Australian he had grown up as a member of a persecuted minority. He also claimed that, although this minority was crucial in shaping the Australian identity, its members had failed to keep an imaginative connection with their homeland. Much of his work can be read as an attempt to rediscover this link, but his understanding of the Irish element changes over his career. In his earlier work, his concern is with the Irish tradition of WB Yeats and James Joyce, and with his own forefathers as people dispossessed by the heartless English. Later he becomes involved with the fate of the nationalists in Northern Ireland. This leads him both to take direct political action in Australia and to write some of his most significant poems. These show the influence of Seamus Heaney or John Kinsella rather than Yeats, but also bring to bear a distinctly Australian sensibility.’ (38)
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'Past Shapes of Things Present' in the Poetry of Syd Harrex (1935 – ),
single work
criticism
(p. 48-61)‘Syd Harrex was born in Smithton, Tasmania, in 1935 and completed his education in Hobart in the 1950s and 60s. He left Tasmania in 1966 to become a Foundation staff member at Flinders University from where he retired in 2001 as Reader in English and Director of the Centre for Research in the New Literatures in English. Harrex began writing and publishing poetry while a student at the University of Tasmania and his poetry retains something of the “silent croon” of his island home. This chapter considers Harrex’s kinship with the poetry of some of his contemporaries and predecessors. It shows how Harrex’s relationship with these writers is a creative dialogue that shapes and enhances his thematic concerns, rather than displaying any sense of Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence.” The chapter also charts Harex’s poetic journey through different Australian landscapes and from immediate and personal concerns to an exploration of some of the poetry’s universal themes.’ (48)
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Intertexts of Capricornia,
single work
criticism
(p. 62-73)'This chapter explores some of the many illuminating literary as well as film intertexts of Xavier Herbert's "vast" 1938 novel Capricornia, looking backwards and forwards in time. It considers both "vertical and "horizontal" types of intertextuality. Thus, some relationships begin with reference to another literary text ("horizontal"), while others work across modes, from novel to film or vice versa ("vertical"). Locating the novel in terms of a global system of intertexts, the chapter offers a balance to readings that attempt to objectify and limit the novel's "reality," especially by narrowly nation-focused explanations. The effect is expansive, moving between conventional literary codes of meaning and into mythic, cartographic and astrological realms of apprehension. What emerges is a text just as impure as the novel's own social idealism - a creole text to embody the Creole Nation. (62)
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John Lang's Wanderings in India (1859) and Rudyard Kipling,
single work
criticism
(p. 74-89)‘This chapter considers the extent to which Rudyard Kipling may have drawn on the writings of an earlier “Anglo-Indian” precursor, the Australian-born John Lang, noting some interesting similarities in both their careers and their writings.’ (74)
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Antipodean Rewritings of Great Expectations : Peter Carey's Jack Maggs (1997) and Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip (2007),
single work
criticism
(p. 220-235)'Counter-discourse theory urges readings of postcolonial fictions that are renarrativisations of canonical texts of empire in terms of their strategies of resistance. Recent novels by Peter Carey and Lloyd Jones amply acknowledge their debt to their precursor, Charles Dickens Great Expectations, but this chapter argues that the contestatory imperial relationship is overlaid with the equally compelling theme of postcolonial home and belonging. Carey exploits the oppositional "writing back" paradigm; Jones, by contrast, makes veneration of the Dickensian text central to his plot. Both, however, can also be described as diasporic novels in their preoccupation with the colony as home, as their colonial protagonists, after a fraught encounter with their Victorian heritage in the metropolitan centre of London, find their destiny/destination in the "return." Although this diasporic reading reiterates the familiar binaries of metropolitan centre and colonial periphery, it repositions the filial relationship as one of postcolonial habitation and settlement.' (220)
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Intertextuality as Discord : Richard Flanagan's Wanting (2008),
single work
criticism
(p. 236-254)'Richard Flanagan employs literary allusions in his 2009 Miles Franklin award-winning historical novel Wanting (2008) to play out themes of power and privilege in a contrapuntal composition that dramatizes links between connecting and precursor texts. Alternating narrative lines follow Mathinna, an Indigenous Tasmanian girl adopted by Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin, and Charles Dickens' infatuation with actress Nelly Ternan. He interrogates apocryphal historical events, such as the extinction of Tasmanian Indigenous people. This chapter argues that Flanagan's intertext exposes the savagery of his ageing male protagonists and the patriarchal society they represent. His author's notes describe Wanting as a "mediation on desire," anticipating and summarily dismissing criticism of his depiction of a Zeus-like Sir John Franklin figuratively or actually raping Mathinna after ball. But does he go too far, debauching Mathinna's historical character in the process? Dickens' love affair with Ellen Ternan, the young female lead in his play The Frozen North (1859), becomes a variation on the father/daughter incest paradigm. Employing archetypal dramas and postcolonial theory, Flanagan ensures that every note plays on others, creating riffs. This surely demonstrates his confidence as an established writer, increasingly popular in the United States of America, perhaps more so than in his own country. Flanagan's novel is intent on discord rather than historical re-inscription.' (23)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
In Memoriam : Syd Harrex (1935 - 2015)
2015
single work
obituary
(for S. C. Harrex
)
— Appears in: Asiatic , June vol. 9 no. 1 2015; (p. 5-7) -
Untitled
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 5 no. 1 2012;
— Review of The Shadow of the Precursor 2012 anthology criticism
-
Untitled
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 5 no. 1 2012;
— Review of The Shadow of the Precursor 2012 anthology criticism -
In Memoriam : Syd Harrex (1935 - 2015)
2015
single work
obituary
(for S. C. Harrex
)
— Appears in: Asiatic , June vol. 9 no. 1 2015; (p. 5-7)
Last amended 30 Sep 2019 15:42:02
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