宅男导航

Time, Tide and History: Eleanor Dark鈥檚 Fiction is the first book-length edited collection of scholarly essays to treat the full span of Eleanor Dark鈥檚 fiction, advancing a recent revival of critical and scholarly interest in Dark鈥檚 writing.

This volume not only establishes a new view of Dark鈥檚 fiction as a whole, but also reflects on the ways in which her fiction speaks to our present moment, in the context of a globally fraught, post-pandemic, Anthropocene era. Above all, the revisiting of Dark鈥檚 fiction is mandated by a desire to recognise the ways in which it anticipates vital debates in Australian literary and national culture today, about settler colonialism and its legacies, and with regard to the histories, condition and status of Australia鈥檚 First Nations people.

This volume interweaves varied topical themes, from formal debates about modernism, historical realism and melodrama, to questions about modernity鈥檚 time and space, about gender and cultural difference, and about the specifics of built and natural environments. Time, Tide and History intentionally loosens the conventions of literary scholarship by including other kinds of work alongside critical and scholarly readings: a written dialogue between two contemporary historians about Dark鈥檚 legacy, and a biographical piece on the life and role of Eleanor Dark鈥檚 husband, Eric Payten Dark.

Bringing together the interwar fiction鈥檚 feminist and modernist dimensions with the historical turn of The Timeless Land trilogy, the essays in Time, Tide and History collectively pursue ethical and political questions while teasing out the distinctive thematic, formal and aesthetic features of Dark鈥檚 fiction.

Brigid Rooney is affiliated with the University of 宅男导航 where for several decades she researched and taught Australian literature and Australian studies. She has published widely on twentieth century and contemporary Australian writing and is the author of Literary Activists: Writer-Intellectuals and Australian Public Life (2009) and Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity (2018).

Fiona Morrison is an Associate Professor in the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW 宅男导航, where she has taught and supervised in the areas of postcolonial and world literatures, Australian literature and women鈥檚 writing. Her most recent book, Christina Stead and the Matter of America (2019), won the Walter McRae Russell Award in 2021 (ASAL). She is currently working on a book-length study of Henry Handel Richardson.

Acknowledgements

• Introduction: Time, Tide and History by Fiona Morrison and Brigid Rooney

Part 1. Modernity and Biography

• Chapter 1: Navigating Modernity: Eleanor Dark鈥檚 Fiction by Melinda J. Cooper
• Chapter 2: Dr Eric Payten Dark: The Man Behind the Novelist by Margo Beasley

Part 2. Prelude to Christopher

• Chapter 3. 鈥淎 Writer by Inheritance鈥�: Dowell O鈥橰eilly鈥檚 Literary Influence in Eleanor Dark鈥檚 Prelude to Christopher and Waterway by Morgan Burgess
• Chapter 4. Motherhood and the Maternal Instinct in the Early Fiction of Eleanor Dark by Anne Maxwell
• Chapter 5. 鈥淎n Outstanding Study in Abnormal Psychology鈥�: 鈥淧ilgrimage鈥� as the Precursor to Prelude to Christopher by Alicia Gaffney
• Chapter 6. Spiritual Vertigo: Illness, Affect and Modernity in Prelude to Christopher by Jessica Gildersleeve

Part 3. Modernist Ecopoetics, Vitalism and the Pastoral

• Chapter 7. Landscapes and Mindscapes: The Confluence of Modernism and Ecopoetics in Eleanor Dark鈥檚 Return to Coolami by Kathleen Davidson
• Chapter 8. Connecting Water and Land: Revisiting Nationalism in the Vitalist Aesthetics of Eleanor Dark and Vance Palmer by Victoria Kuttainen
• Chapter 9. Scales of Relation: Eleanor Dark鈥檚 Waterway, the Aquatic Pastoral and Communal Mourning by Fiona Morrison

Part 4. The Timeless Land

• Chapter 10. In Conversation: The Historical Imagination and Legacy of Eleanor Dark by Tom Griffiths and Grace Karskens
• Chapter 11. Outlaws of History: Eleanor Dark鈥檚 Trilogy of Nation by Philip Mead
• Chapter 12. Eleanor Dark鈥檚 The Timeless Land *Trilogy as Anthropocene Narrative *by Meg Brayshaw
• Chapter 13. Eleanor Dark鈥檚 Chronotopes: Time and Narration in The Timeless Land Trilogy by Michael Griffiths
• Chapter 14. 鈥淎 Careless Sort of Benevolence鈥�: Melodrama and Critique in The Timeless Land *Trilogy *by Brigid Rooney

Part 5. Writing in a Time of Crisis

• Chapter 15. Reading The Little Company in Times of Crisis by Susan Carson

Contributors

Index

鈥淭his rich collection of original contributions from leading scholars underlines the essential place of the novelist Eleanor Dark in any serious account of Australian intellectual and cultural development. A gifted writer and thinker, Dark grappled with the meaning of antipodean modernity, crafted an original interpretation of the nation鈥檚 colonial origins, and contributed to defining a modern settler colonial imaginary. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in her work and its place in Australia鈥檚 twentieth-century history.鈥� 鈥� Frank Bongiorno, Australian National University

 

鈥淭his valuable collection reassesses Eleanor Dark鈥檚 writing of the 1930s and 40s in relation to modernist, feminist, ecological and Australian settler literature. ... a repositioning of her remarkable work that is long overdue.鈥�

鈥� Bonnie Kime Scott, San Diego State University

 

鈥淎 brilliant example of innovation in contemporary Australian literary criticism. The canonical Eleanor Dark is released from her ossified and dusty prestige and re-examined and re-presented as a writer of intellectual complexity, contemporary social relevance and beguiling formal and ideological intricacy.鈥�

鈥� Gail Jones, Western 宅男导航 University

 

鈥淭hese essays sweep us through profound questions at stake in the relationship of humanity to the forces it creates, both destructive and generative. This book introduces a new generation of readers to Dark鈥檚 defining works, revealing the models of community and connection she offers us from the Australia of her time.鈥�

鈥� Nicole Moore, University of New South Wales

 

鈥淓leanor Dark was one of the major novelists of 20th century Australia ... This volume, containing contributions by a great many of the leading voices in Australian literary studies, explores Dark鈥檚 entire oeuvre. It shows how the modern century in Australian literature was very much her century.鈥�

鈥� Nicholas Birns, New York University

 

Format: paperback
Size: 254 脳 178 mm
312 pages
Copyright: © 2024
ISBN: 9781743329665
Publication: 01 Jun 2024
Series: 宅男导航 Studies in Australian Literature