Br & Aust Fiction

7/29/2019 Br & Aust Fiction

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BRITISH FICTIONIn 1900, the age of the Victorian novel

was clearly at an end Hardy andMeredith its last great representatives

had ceased writing novels in the 1890s

New attitudes emerged influenced notonly by such intellectual factors asevolutionary theory, socialist and

anarchist denunciations of existingsociety and the erosion of religious faithbut also by the loosening of the moral


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structure that in England paralleled the

great shifting of class strata which by

1918 end of the power of the traditionallanded aristocracy

There was a sense of inherent

instability in social relations also linked

with the feeling of personal alienation

that was already strong among

continental Europeans in the 19th C and

the permeation of psychoanalytical

doctrines during the period just before


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and after WWI - tended to accentuate the

novelists concern with the individuals

rootlessness Changing ideas of the relationship betw

the sexes parallel with the influence of

Freudian and later Jungian doctrinesexpressed in emotional rather than

scientific terms

D H Lawrence, more than any other

writer of the time perceived how the

changing of social relationships was


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linked with the shift in sexual relation-ships devoted much of his writing to

giving fictional expression to his insightsAs early as 1913, he was declaring thatestablishment of a new relation or the

readjustment of the old one betw thesexes was theproblem of the day and 10years later, in Kangaroo, Lawrence waslooking back to 1915 as the year whenthe old order ended, when Londonperished from being the heart of theworld and became a vortex of broken


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passions, lusts, hopes, fears and horrors

Lawrence brought together in a more

striking way than any other writer of histime the link betw the social relations

that were changing and the sexual

relations that must change if men wereto salvage a healthy way of life out of the

collapse of the old order

Global war is one of the defining

features of 20th C experience WWI cut

forever the ties with the past - masses


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of dead bodies strewn upon the ground,

plumes of poison gas drifting through the

air, hundreds of miles of trenches infestedwith rats indelible images that have

come to be associated with WWI (1914-

18) it was a war that unleashed death,loss and suffering on an unprecedented

scale - brought discontent and

disillusionment men were plunged intogloom at the knowledge that progress

had not saved the world from war


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WWI left its record in literature soldier

poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and

Wilfred Owen used irony as a usefulmeans of representing the gulf between

expectation and reality, the murderous

war and unsuspecting nation, thesoldiers comrades in the trenches and

the unseen enemy across no mans-land

the chilly reception to their work by anequally bewildered reading public

reinforced cultural divisions some


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readers condemned the war poets

attacks as unpatriotic and opinion

remained divided betw those who hadfought and knew, and those who

preferred not to know

Another influential factor on early 20th CEnglish language fiction fascination

wielded by the French and Russian

novelists of the preceding generationsso different in their approaches and

achievements from 19th C British writers


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- by the turn of the century continental

writers were becoming better understood

as events began to force British societyout of its isolation and their influence was

apparent in the works of British writers

Flauberts ideal of objectivity, Zolasattempt to achieve a scientifically exact

naturalism and the Symbolist emphasis

on suggestion as opposed to statementall had their influence on the young

writers of Great Britain and its colonies


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Turgenev most important of the

Russian novelists in terms of the effect

of his works on both English andAmerican writers eg on Joseph

Conrad and Henry James

Later in the 1920s Chekhov hisrepresentations of social

purposelessness and whose dissociative

devices seem so often to be echoed in

the works of Virginia Woolf and

Katherine Mansfield


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Joyces Ulysses andVirginia Woolfs

novels used stream-of-consciousness

technique they were the two mostcelebrated creators of stream-of-

consciousness fiction in English both

were dissimilar in many ways but bothcarried far the formal experimentalism

that was a special mark of the modernist

movement

rejected realisticrepresentation and traditional formal

expectations by exploring the Freudian


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depths of the characters psyches throughstream of consciousness and interior

monologueFreuds theory of the unconscious and

infantile sexuality radically altered the

popular understanding of the mind andidentity

WW II even more profound impact

than WW I on peoples ideas aboutthemselves and their place in theuniverse the terrible fact of the atombombs existence shook their sense of


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Lord of the Flies (1954) it tells of a

group of schoolboys isolated on an island

who revert to savagery an imaginativeinterpretation of the religious theme of

original sin and a parody on the Victorian

smugness ofBallantynesThe CoralIsland Golding has from the beginning

cultivated an inner vision that is not in any

way bounded by orthodoxies of form orideology if he has any mission it is to

break down smug complacency that all


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our woes are external he did it

dramatically in Lord of the Fliesin later

novels like Pincher Martin and The Spire explored the tragedy of the human

condition, mingling the realistic freely with

the fantastic drawing on popularmythology esp in his later and less

accessible works like Darkness Visible

and Rites of Passage - awarded theNobel prize for literature in 1983


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The turbulent 1930s ending in WW II,

turned many of the established writers

toward traditional values T.S.Eliot(1888-1965), Edith Sitwell (1887-1964),

Evelyn Waugh (1903-66) and Graham

Greene (1904-1991) turned increasinglyto Christianity

Of these writers, only Greene lived to

have a career that endured into the

1980s there was much in the social

landscape he presented that Greene


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shared with his contemporaries of the1930s a decade tortured by hope and

terror his themes of ambivalences ofguilt and innocence, the criminal and thefailure demand our sympathies inGreenes books and we have to shed ourconventional ideas of good and evil andassume that Gods mercy is incalculable,in order to understand them there is a

shift into more obviously theologicalpreoccupations in later books fromBrighton Rockwhich introduces


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Greenes attitude as what he once

described as a Catholic agnostic and

initiates a group of some of the bestnovels of our timeThe Power and the

Glory, The Heart of the Matterand The

End of the Affairthe constantly renewedinterests of fresh predicaments that fit into

the greater Greenean ambiguities has not

lapsed in later worksThe Comediansand The Honorary Consulthough there

is no obvious continuity in the sense of


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characters moving from one novel to thenext - Greenes work does have athematic unity in his own words aboutHenry Jamesthe symmetry of histhought lends the whole body of his workthe importance of a system

Among the writers that dominateEnglish fiction besides GreeneDorisLessing born in Persia in 1919 andraised in Rhodesia a Zimbabwean-British - wrote her first novel therebefore she came to England in 1949she won rapid fame with the publication

ofThe Grass is Singing(1950) her


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novels are largely concerned with people

involved in the social and political

upheavals of the 20th C - went on to aseries of largely autobiographical novels,

Martha Quest and its successors in

which her concerns for women and herfears for the planet have led her in the

direction of futurist science fiction, notably

in the Canopus in Argos series which shebegan with Shikasta in 1979 awarded

the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007


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Sylvia Townsend Warner(1893-1978) refer to notes page 459-460 (the

Encyclopedia of World Literature in the20th C)

Over the past half century, the face and

culture of Britain has changed with theinfluences of immigrants or the 2ndgeneration of children of immigrants -much of Britain's popular writing of thelast 15 years has come from novelistswho are immigrants, novelists such asCaryl Phillips, Hanif Kureishi,


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Sunetra Gupta, Jan Lo Shinebourne,Salman Rushdie & Kazuo Ishiguro

Caryl Phillips says the master narrativeof the 20th C is diaspora anddisplacement uprootings and new

beginnings are in Phillips words thedominant anxiety of our age themes ofmovement and immigration, transnationalbelonging, multiculturalism and questionsof and challenges to identity are centralconcerns created by living in a newculture and society


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The post-millennial decade witnessed anew literary generation emerge and

establish itself with familiar and lessfamiliar names such as Monica Ali,Nicola Barker, Steven Hall, PhilipHensher, Tom McCarthy, Patrick Neateand Zadie Smith

Concurrently, there have beenincreasingly sophisticated engagementswith genre fiction from Susanna Clarke,David Mitchell, David Peace, ChinaMiville and Sarah Waters.


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Meanwhile, already established, now

canonical, writers such as such as Amis,

Barnes, Byatt, Hollinghurst, Rushdie andWinterson continue to publish work that

commands attention.

This same period has witnessed thegrowth of new models of literary

production, evolving cultural contexts,

and an increasingly transnational planet.

Themes - the post-9/11 novel in Britain

ecocriticism digital media and the


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novel - graphic fictions adaptations and

appropriations class, power and

marginality - the waning ofpostmodernism post-imperial/global

imaginaries, etc.


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AUSTRALIAN FICTION 3 principal phases colonial, nationalist

and modern

Aust began as a British penal settlement

in 1788 its first literary offeringscomposed mainly by European settlers

trying to recreate a European experience

in a most un-European landDuring the nationalist phase aust-born

writers proclaimed their literary


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Independence from Europe and asserted

the distinctiveness and vitality of the Aust

experienceWith the issue of national identity settled

Aust literature has emerged in recent

decades as a world literature whoseuniversal vision of the human condition

in the 20th C is rooted in its particular

view of the Aust experience

Themes frontier and nationalist

utopianism, human victimization (as


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found in the treatment of convicts and

aborigines), the impact of war, the

transition from the values of an older,agrarian order to those of the

technological-industrial present and the

search for individual identityThe year 1888 was the centennial of the

1st settlement the anniversary- a

literary watershed novels of convictsand exploration gave way to a spirit of

nationalism led in 1901 to the end of


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colonial status

A Young Australia attitude was growing

among Australians a conviction thattheirs was a new country with a bright

future this notion was reflected in the

literature of the time

The focal point of the new trend was The

Bulletina weekly publication with the

slogan Australia for the Australians 1st

serious discussion and dissemination of

Aust literature fiction medium - short


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story and novel but it also fosters the

bush ballad which celebrated the

adventurous, heroic life of the outback inmarking an Aust Adam who would sustain

the nation-to-be with his virtues of

courage, compassion and endurancechief among the bush balladistsHenry

Lawson (1867-1922) & A.B. (Banjo)

Paterson (1864-1941) whose verypopularThe Man from Snowy River and

Other Verses (1895) was the 1st important


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eg of Aust popular culture

Influenced by European and American

realism, the Aust short story alsoemerged and matured in the 1890s

strongly associated with the Sydney

magazine The Bulletin along with thebush ballads the short storyseen as

a distinctive form esp suited to Aust

conditions flourished in the 1890s andthe 1930s, 40s, 70s and 80s


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Most prominent figureHenry Lawson

whose volumes of short stories

constitute one of the major achievementsof Aust literature in While the Billy Boils

(1896) and Joe Wilson and His Mates

(1901) Lawsons deft technique and sureinsights enable him to capture definitively

19th C Aust outback occupations and

character types identified as the voice

of the bush and the bushman


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Among the best- known writers before

WW IHenry Lawson, Barbara

Baynton, William Astley, John Furphy,Henry Handel Richardson (pen name

Ethel Florence Lindesay Robertson),

William Gosse Hay, Louis Stone, MilesFranklin and Norman Lindsay their

writings often centred on life in the bush

with all its difficulties eg The DroversWife and The Bush Undertaker


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Joseph Furphy is the most Aust ofnovelists his book Such Is Life

thought by many to be the Great AustNovel written in the 1890s but onlypublished in 1903 anecdotal medley of

Aust attitudes and personality types inits mockery of the style of the 19th CEnglish novel it spawned a host ofimitators and marked a new direction in

Aust fictionEarly 20th C fiction dominated by

Henry Handel Richardson lived abroad


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most of the time perhaps the best Aust

novelist of the era HerMaurice Guest

(1908) set in Leipzig, Germany but herthree-volume The Fortunes of Richard

Mahony(1917-29) is a saga of an

immigrant familys fortunes inAustexamined the destructive effects of

cultural schizophrenia of an immigrant

Irish aristocrat and a rich detailed accountof the late-colonial social and cultural

scene in Victoria

Th l di i f h i d


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The two leading writers of the periodbetw the war 1920s & 1930s Vance

Palmer (1885-1959) and KatharineSusannah Pritchard (1883-1969)carried the new spirit of liberation intothe political and social arena Palmerstrong faith in the life of the smallcommunities esp rural ones, asseedbeds of egalitarianism in the new

commonwealth in The Passage (1930),The Swayne Family(1934) and thetrilogyGolconda (1948), Seedtime


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(1957) and The Big Fellow(1959)

Pritchard a feminist and Marxist her

socialist thought and interest in theregional occupations of her characters

found in novels like The Black Opal

(1921) and Working Bullocks (1926) hernovel Coondaroo (1929) on white

mistreatment of the aborigines aroused a

great deal of oppositionThree writers who made a worldwide

reputation after WW IIPatrick White


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Morris West and Colleen McCullough

White born in England and partly

educated in England and Aust onlyAust writer to win the Nobel Prize for

literature in 1973 considered the major

Aust writer of the late 20th C his 3 earlynovels Happy Valley(1939) The Living

and the Dead(1941) and The Aunts

Story (1948) introduce many ofWhites and modern Austs fictional

themes human isolation and the failure

f i ti th i di id l h


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of communication, the individuals searchfor identity, the epiphany of the fleeting &

visionary insightThe Tree of Man(1955) first book to attract internationalattention asserts the value that residesin inarticulate, mundane lives waiting fortranscendent illumination - published 12large novels - best known workVoss(1957) about an expedition to inland Aust

White is a classic eg of the writer assuspended man, suspended betwbelonging and alienation, the aesthetic

d th i i th ti l d th


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and the civic, the national and theinternational his writings reflect this

oscillation not only betw the two sides ofthe world but also betw the two sides ofthe self it is at once profane and sacred,puritan and sensual, combiningdevastatingly witty social satire with apreoccupation with a grandeur toooverwhelming to express, conventionally

called God critically his work was betterreceived in England and the USA than in

Australia not surprising since Whites

ti ith th ibiliti f


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preoccupation with the possibilities oflanguage and form and with the psychic

as well as the physical was not consonantwith the largely realist and naturalistconcerns of Aust writing of the 1940s and1950sWhites blending of the methodsof poetry and fiction is still the subject ofcritical debate but his achievement insetting a new antirealist course for Aust

fiction is beyond question has manyfollowers Randolph Stow mostimpressive

f f


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By the 1960s Aust fiction was far-

ranging in its subject matter of any

literature in the worldThomas Keneallyone of the eras

most productive authors his highly

regarded bookSchindlers Ark(1982)based on a true story of the Holocaust

that was made into the Academy award

winning film Schindlers Listin 1993

Some of the major novelists of the

1980s and after Jon Cleary, Frank

H d Th A l D id M l f D id


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Hardy, Thea Astley, David Malouf, David

Ireland, Christopher J. Koch, Frank

Moorhouse, Gerald Murnane,GlendaAdams, Nicholas Hasluck and Amanda

Lohrey

David Malouf - born in Queensland,Australia, in 1934 to a Lebanese-

Christian father and English-Jewish

mother left Australia aged twenty-fourand lived in Britain from 1959-68 and

returned to teach English at the

U i it f S d h h t d


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University of Sydney, where he stayeduntil 1977- he now writes full-time and

lives part of the year in Australia andpart in southern Tuscany in Italy aprolific and diverse writer-won numerousawards and has been shortlisted for the

Booker Prize twice in 1994 & 2011 - in1996, his novel Remembering Babylonwas awarded the first International

IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, valued at100,000 Irish punts - currently theworld's largest literary award

B tt k t d f th l i l


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Better known today for the lyrical,condensed language of novels such as

An Imaginary Life (1978) andRemembering Babylon (1993), it isperhaps not surprising that Malouf'searliest literary experiments took the

form of poetry rather than prose

Recurring themes in Malouf's workinclude the relationships between past

and present, continuity and change,animal and human, and the role oflanguage as a mediator of experience

H Ki l f t t f th


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Henry Kingsley refer to notes from the

Australian Dictionary of Biography

R f


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Reference:

1. Ed., Laurie DiMauro. Modern British

Literature. Detroit: St James Press, 2000.2. Comptons by Britannica. London:

Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 2008.

3. Ed., Kirkpatrick, D.L. English Literature.

London: St James Press, 1991

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