Australian fiction
Articles
- Short Notices
Hergenhan provides brief reviews of recent publications of relevance to Australian literary studies.
1 October 1970 - Review of Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch by Jean-François Vernay
Christopher Koch occupies an undeniably prominent place in contemporary Australian fiction. This is explained in part by his longevity as a writer. Born in 1932…
1 November 2008 - Review of Thea Astley's Fictional Worlds, edited by Susan Sheridan and Paul Genoni
This publication offers an overdue acknowledgement of Thea Astley's achievement and a timely appraisal of her reputation as an outstanding Australian fiction writer. The collection…
1 October 2008 - Review of Studies in Classic Australian Fiction, by Michael Wilding
In the absence of any introduction this collection of critical essays leaves its readers to interpret its challenging title. This of course calls up D.H…
1 October 1997 - ‘Deadly’ Work: Reading the Short Fiction of Archie Weller
When an Aboriginal writer appropriates western literary forms to tell stories of pre-invasion tribal heritage and culture, there is little objection from many black or…
1 October 1993 - War in Post-1960s Fiction: Johnston, Stow, McDonald, Malouf and Les Murray
Discusses a number of war novels which, rather than focussing on military conflicts, centre on the ways in which war has shaped Australian experience. Argues…
1 October 1985 - The Usable Past: Australian War Fiction of the 1950s
Discusses a number of Australian novels of the Second World War in terms of their characterization of the soldier figure, depiction of wartime themes of…
1 October 1985 - Charismatic Masculinity in David Malouf’s Fiction
This examination of charismatic masculinity and the representation of gender in Malouf’s fiction concentrates on the short story collection Every Move You Make.
1 May 2010 - Review of David Foster: The Satirist of Australia, by Susan Lever
The Australian literary landscape is shaded by the colossal figure of Patrick White, a figure summoned in Andrew Riemer's lucid foreword to Susan Lever's landmark…
1 June 2011 - ‘How to encourage our literature’: Australian Fiction in the Australian Public Library
A visitor to a typical major public library in Australia prior to the Second World War would have found it difficult to locate more than…
1 May 2012 - Assimilation or Appropriation: Uses of European Literary Forms in Black Australian Writing
In his introduction to the anthology of Aboriginal poetry, Inside Black Australia Kevin Gilbert writes: 'Aboriginal poetry rattles, flings and bends the chains and…
1 October 1992 - Review of A Long and Winding Road: Xavier Herbert's Literary Journey, by Sean Monahan
It is now some thirty years since Poor Fellow My Country was published, twenty since Xavier Herbert died. Both novel and author have fallen into…
1 May 2004 - Review of Against the Grain: Beverley Farmer's Writing, by Lyn Jacobs
Like Lyn Jacobs I like Beverley Farmer's writing, having followed it since Alone and having taught, most recently, The Seal Woman where my twenty-something honours…
1 May 2004 - Short Story Anthologies and ‘the Solid Body of Australian Fiction’
Examines a random group of Australian short story anthologies and their function as textual practice. Aims to uncover some of the 'submerged constitutive practices' that…
1 May 2000 - Review of Barbara Hanrahan: A Biography, by Annette Stewart
Barbara Hanrahan was forty-eight years old when she noted in her diary of 6 August 1988 that she had received a letter from Annette Stewart…
1 October 2010 - Getting Started: The Emergence of Christina Stead’s Early Fiction
Christina Stead had her first two books published in London in 1934. It was an impressive literary debut by what the Bulletin called 'a Sydney…
1 October 1987 - Review of Capricornia and South of Capricornia: short stories (1925-34) by Xavier Herbert, and Xavier Herbert: episodes from Capricornia, Poor Fellow My Country and other fiction, nonfiction and letters, edited by Frances de Groen and Peter Pierce.
Just as we might have thought there was nothing new to be said about Xavier Herbert's flawed achievement, these three books challenge us to rethink…
1 May 1993 - Mateship, Individualism and the Production of Character in Australian Fiction
Examines the mode of characterisation prevalent in Australian fiction, a mode which presents character as “the product of social, extrinsic determinants rather than as the…
1 October 1984 - Christos Tsiolkas and the Pornographic Logic of Commodity Capitalism
Putting Tsiolkas’s works into a wider context of international writing, the essay is concerned with ‘the fictional tradition that either deploys the pornographic, or evokes…
1 May 2010 - Along Gender Lines: Reassessing Relationships between Australian Novels, Gender and Genre from 1939 to 2006
Using AustLit database records, the author examines the number and proportion of Australian novels published from 1930 to 2006 by wo/men, the genre of these…
1 October 2009
Contributors
- Katherine Bode
- Paul Genoni
- Heather Gaunt
- Laurie Hergenhan
- Laurie Hergenhan
- Laurie Hergenhan
- Rick Hosking
- Harry Payne Heseltine
- Stephen Holden
- Ivor Indyk
- Lyn Jacobs
- Janine Little
- Bronwen Levy
- Elaine Lindsay
- Naomi Milthorpe
- John McLaren
- Andrew McCann
- Don Randall
- Anita Kristina Segerberg
- Graeme Turner