Introduction to Australian Literature

A brief overview of Australian literature focussing on some of its central themes. Also a guide to reading literary texts. Focuses on short stories, novels and poetry.

Introduction to Australian Literature (ENGL1100) provides a general introduction to the study of Australian literature. In reading texts from a range of genres and periods, students will be introduced to critical reading skills, and to significant themes in Australian writing.

The course comprises three sections:

1. Study of two novels which consider the relationship between story-telling, history and fiction: Robert Drewe's Our Sunshine, about Ned Kelly, and Janet Kelly's The Colour of Walls.

2. A study of short stories from the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. This section of the course looks in detail at literary form and stylistic innovation.

3. Discussion of two short novels which consider key themes in Australian culture: war and masculity (in David Malouf's Fly away Peter) and sexuality and cultural identity (in Christos Tsiolkas' Loaded).

The course will also introduce you to research resources in the field of Australian literature, among which the most helpful is the Austlit database (at http://www.austlit.edu.au/). You are encouraged to browse in Austlit to get a sense of the range of contemporary and historical writing, and criticism.

Texts: 

Malouf, David Fly Away Peter 1982 Novella

Tsiolkas, Christos Loaded 1995 Novel

Drewe, Robert Our Sunshine 1991 Novel

Hergenhan, Laurie [ed.] The Australian Short Story : An Anthology from the 1890s to the 1980s 1986 Short story

Kelly, Janet The Colour of Walls 2003 Novel