Folie, Topography and Family in Murray’s Middle-Distance Poems
Abstract
The article demonstrates that Murray’s poems “of more than one or two pages but less than fifty or a hundred” have “modes and preoccupations in common: they are topographical poems in which the protagonist moves through a landscape observing and reflecting; or they are family memoirs and chronicles; or … they are a combination of both” (p.43). The author also examines Murray’s sympathy for the “Foucaultian crew of social outsiders … marginalised by folie” (p. 49), which he sees as an energising force in the most successful of these poems.
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Published 1 October 2001 in Volume 20 No. 2. Subjects: Les Murray.
Cite as: Pollnitz, Christopher. ‘Folie, Topography and Family in Murray’s Middle-Distance Poems.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 2001, doi: 10.20314/als.2b7dc980da.