The Australian experience : critical essays on Australian novels

Abstract

In its challenge to look afresh at sixteen novels about the Australian experience of life - novels as different as Harris's Emigrant Family, Stow's Tourmaline, Keneally's Jimmie Blacksmith or White's Vivisector - this book adds a new dimension to Australian literary criticism. The novels range from the nineteenth century to today; their subjects are as diverse as colonial utopianism, the savagery of the convict system, the treatment of primitive peoples, war and nationalism. Yet through them all runs one universal, human theme: the search for self-understanding. Lucid and informed, on occasion provocative and contradictory, this collection of critical essays is essentially an exercise in discovery or rediscovery by many distinguished writers. Not all readers will accept these highly personal revaluations - many will be exasperated by them - but none will fail to enjoy their challenge. Show more