Literary techniques, structures & modes

The form of Kangaroo has found few admirers. John Middleton Murry described it as 'a chaotic book. It has many passages of great descriptive beauty, but internally it is a chaos'; Julian Moynahan has written that 'from a formal point…

A close reading of Slessor’s sequence, focussing on the nature of the visions and the visionaries; the use Slessor makes of his sources; and questions of unity. Argues that the sequence has a unity of purpose: to consider Cook’s stature…

The essay about Jolley’s women ‘looks at the ways in which Jolley represents women’s longing for other women; it argues that this longing is central to her representation of female characters and the feminine condition. Jolley’s literary style, her writing…

The article looks at the last four novels by Jolley which were ‘somewhat neglected by scholars’. Taken as a body of ‘late work’ with some evidence of ‘late style’ (Edward Said), ‘might give them a more acknowledged place in a…

Readers of Shirley Hazzard's fiction have long been familiar with the ways her densely allusive prose embeds her stories and her characters in uropean art and writing. While the plots of her novels follow the political and social dramas of…

Examines the political consequences inherent in the genre of the ‘well-made novel’. Argues that ‘a reading of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith may tell us, not only what Keneally’s novel explicitly states, that there is a limit to understanding white…

Using biographical criticism as its methodological starting point, Kinnane’s article discusses Johnston’s way of creating fiction out of personal experience, highlights where he departs from fact, and shows how the autobiographical material is used, selected and shaped to fit in…

It has been generally accepted that the theme of Capricornia is racial conflict. The book's virtues are most often described in terms of that conflict, rather than in terms of any attempt to analyse, explain or investigate it. Thus breadth…

Discusses Malouf’s ‘elusive’ fiction in the context of his poetry, concentrating on the treatment of common developing concerns.