BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT
Australasian Studies / Literature / Postcolonial Studies
Postcolonial Issues
in Australian Literature
Edited by Nathanael O’Reilly
ISBN: 9781604977110 6 x 9” Hardcover Level: College & Faculty
320 pages August 2010 US$114.99 / £67.99
Description
This book presents thirteen essays that address the numerous ways in which
Australian literature is postcolonial and can be read using postcolonial read-
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ing strategies. The collection addresses a wide variety of Australian texts
Postcolonial issues in Australian literature / edited by produced from the colonial period to the present, including works by Henry
Nathanael O’Reilly. Lawson, Miles Franklin, Patrick White, Xavier Herbert, David Malouf, Pe-
p. cm. ter Carey, Rodney Hall, Andrew McGahan, Elizabeth Jolley, Judith Wright,
Includes bibliographical references and index. Kate Grenville, Janette Turner Hospital, Melissa Lucashenko, Kim Scott, and
ISBN 978-1-60497-711-0 (alk. paper) Alexis Wright. The chapters focus on works by Indigenous authors and writ-
1. Australian literature--20th century--History and criti- ers of European descent, and examine specifically postcolonial issues, includ-
cism. 2. Postcolonialism in literature. 3. Australia--In
literature. I. O’Reilly, Nathanael. II. Title. ing hybridity, first contact, resistance, appropriation, race relations, language
usage, indigeneity, immigration/invasion, land rights and ownership, national
PR9609.6.P67 2010 identity, marginalization, mapping, naming, mimicry, the role of historical
820.9’358--dc22 narratives, settler guilt and denial, and anxieties regarding belonging. The
essays emphasize the postcolonial nature of Australian literature and utilize
2010020694 postcolonial theory to analyze Australian texts.
The primary objectives of the essay collection are to emphasize, high-
light, and examine the postcolonial nature of Australian literature. Within
postcolonial studies, literature from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean
is often given preference, causing the literature of settler societies such as
Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to be ignored. This collection provides
ample evidence that Australian literature is indeed postcolonial literature, that
it deserves more recognition as such, and that postcolonial reading strategies
provide immensely fruitful methods for analyzing Australian texts. Moreover,
the collection seeks to fill a gap in postcolonial studies.
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BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT
Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature
Description (continued) Table of Contents
Essay collections focusing on the postcolonial nature of national and Acknowledgments
regional literatures have previously been published; however, Post- Introduction: Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature
colonial Issues in Australian Literature is the first collection to focus (Nathanael O’Reilly)
exclusively on Australian literature as postcolonial literature, and it Chapter 1: Reading Postcolonial Australia
is the first collection of essays on Australian literature in which all of (Bill Ashcroft)
the contributors write from a postcolonial theoretical perspective. It Chapter 2: Jack Lindsay, Patrick White, and
is thus a groundbreaking work that makes an important contribution Postcolonial Medievalism (Nicholas Birns)
to both Australian literary studies and postcolonial studies. Chapter 3: The Postcolonial Nature of an Australian
Regional Literature (Per Henningsgaard)
Narrow definitions of ‘postcolonial’ that exclude settler colonies Chapter 4: ‘Thick with Coded Testaments’:
such as Australia not only serve to marginalize rich bodies of lit- Representations of Postcolonial Space
erature and literary criticism––they also ignore and/or obscure the in Janette Turner Hospital’s Oyster
fact that there are many kinds of postcolonialism, many types of (Nicholas Dunlop)
postcolonial societies, and many ways for texts to be postcolonial. Chapter 5: Spaces of Hybridity: Creating a Sense of
Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature, as a body of work, in- Belonging through Spatial Awareness
sists that Australian literature is postcolonial literature and deserves (Lesley Hawkes)
Chapter 6: The Unbearable (Im)Possibility of
equal status with the literature of other postcolonial nations. The
Belonging: Andrew McGahan’s
contributions in the volume demonstrate that postcolonial theory The White Earth (Martina Horakova)
and postcolonial analyses of Australian literature continue to be Chapter 7: The Sorry Novels: Peter Carey’s Oscar and
useful, relevant and innovative. Lucinda, Greg Matthews’ The Wisdom of
This is an important book for all literature and Australasian col- Stones and Kate Grenville’s The Secret
lections. The collection is primarily aimed at students, teachers, and River (Rebecca Weaver-Hightower)
Chapter 8: Need I Repeat?: Settler Colonial Biopolitics
scholars of Australian and postcolonial literature––including un-
and Postcolonial Iterability in Kim Scott’s
dergraduate and postgraduate students, faculty who teach courses
Benang (Michael R. Griffiths)
in Australian and postcolonial literature, and scholars who conduct Chapter 9: Negotiating Subjectivity: Indigenous
research on Australian and postcolonial literature. The book will Feminist Praxis and the Politics of
be useful for courses on both Australian literature and postcolonial Aboriginality in Alexis Wright’s Plains of
literature, especially postcolonial courses that include Australian Promise and Melissa Lucashenko’s
texts. The collection includes contributions addressing the work of Steam Pigs (Tomoko Ichitani)
many internationally recognized, leading contemporary Australian Chapter 10: ‘[P]eople Often Judged by What They
novelists, providing the collection with broad appeal to students and Feared or Knew Existed in Themselves’:
scholars around the world with an interest in prominent, award-win- A Postcolonial Critique of Disability in
ing authors and works. Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well (Katie Ellis)
Chapter 11: Revisiting Australia: Historical Fabrications,
Telling Histories/Stories and Other Colonial
About the Editor Delusions in Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake
(Sarah Zapata)
Nathanael O’Reilly is an assistant professor of English at the Uni- Chapter 12: The Postcolonial Screen: Elaborate
versity of Texas at Tyler. He holds a PhD from Western Michigan Forgeries in Rodney Hall’s The Second
University, specializing in Australian, postcolonial, and modern Bridegroom (Peter Mathews)
British and Irish literature. He has published articles examining Chapter 13: Colonial Knowledge, Postcolonial Poetics
works by a variety of authors, including Peter Carey, David Ma- (Lyn McCredden)
louf, Tim Winton, Liam Davison, Murray Bail, and Janette Turner Bibliography
Hospital, among others. He is the coeditor of Fear in Australian Notes on Contributors
Literature and Film, a special issue of Antipodes. Index
20 Northpointe Parkway, Suite 188, Amherst, New York 14228
www.cambriapress.com
T (716)568-7828 F (716)608-1489 E
[email protected] An innovative, independent, non-subsidy publisher of academic research
