Explorations and discoveries : charting the imaginative world of Elizabeth Jolley

Abstract

The primary objectives of this thesis are to explore the imaginative world of Elizabeth Jolley and to place her within the context of other Australian writers in order to determine the limitations and achievements of her work. The body of this thesis consists of seven chapters. Within them all page numbers to Jolley's work appear paranthetically together with an abbreviated title of the story either being quoted from or discussed. The Modern Language Association of America's method of citation has been used in the endnotes as well as in the list of works consulted. Jolley's literary output for an author who published her first book in 1976 is considerable. In the fourteen years from 1976 to 1990 she has published three book-length collections of short stories and ten novels. This thesis makes no claim to providing an exhaustive appraisal of all her fictional work. Rather within the thesis reference is made to a range of writing from the Jolley corpus and five novels are focussed upon in considerable detail. In her writing it is Elizabeth Jolley's habit of mind as an author to return to characters emerging in preceding published works, to revisit landscapes and places and to rework phrases, images and motifs introduced in earlier writing. This is all part of what Helen Garner refers to as Jolley's "inspired thrift."1 Such overlapping or exploratory recycling means that it is possible to feel out the physical, emotional, intellectual and symbolic textures of her imaginative world through the close study of a selection of novels from within her oeuvre. Show more