Böcker utgivna av Peter Lang Ltd

Winner of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature¿s Alvie Egan Award 2019!Winner of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS) Dissertation Award 2018This is the first in-depth, broad-based study of the impact of the Australian High Court¿s landmark Mabo decision of 1992 on Australian fiction. More than any other event in Australiäs legal, political and cultural history, the Mabo judgement ¿ which recognised indigenous Australians¿ customary «native title» to land ¿ challenged previous ways of thinking about land and space, settlement and belonging, race and relationships, and nation and history, both historically and contemporaneously. While Mabo¿s impact on history, law, politics and film has been the focus of scholarly attention, the study of its influence on literature has been sporadic and largely limited to examinations of non-Aboriginal novels.Now, a quarter of a century after Mabo, this book takes a closer look at nineteen contemporary novels ¿ including works by David Malouf, Alex Miller, Kate Grenville, Thea Astley, Tim Winton, Michelle de Kretser, Richard Flanagan, Alexis Wright and Kim Scott ¿ in order to define and describe Australiäs literary imaginary as it reflects and articulates post-Mabo discourse today. Indeed, literature¿s substantial engagement with Mabo¿s cultural legacy ¿ the acknowledgement of indigenous people¿s presence in the land, in history, and in public affairs, as opposed to their absence ¿ demands a re-writing of literary history to account for a ¿Mabo turn¿ in Australian fiction.

John Sparrow, Warden of All Souls, was a notable character in post-war Oxford. He was educated in the old-time classical humanist tradition, and this remained his field even as the world about him changed. A man with a brilliant mind, he is often remembered negatively ¿ as a bogeyman to progressives because of his outspoken conservatism ¿ and as a disappointment to those who expected a more solid academic achievement. It was felt that his talents were too widely scattered.Presenting hitherto unpublished letters and papers which vividly evoke the contemporary Oxford scene, Peter Raina traces this scattering of talent. Sparrow may have been a generalist, but he dabbled in depth in many disciplines. He was an expert on Latin, on law, on inscriptions, on rare books and on poetry. Above all he was a tireless supporter and friend of other academics and poets in a special generation. The book gives context to his circles of influence and to his uncompromising intelligence and distinct charm.

How do you bring history alive? This book explores the use of dramatic modes ¿ such as melodrama, metatheatre, and immersion ¿ to bring immediacy and a sense of living presence to works of literature rooted in history. Focusing on Australian and Canadian literature from the late 1980s to the present, the book features original research on novels by award-winning writers such as David Musgrave, Richard Flanagan, Daphne Marlatt, Peter Carey, Tomson Highway, Thomas Keneally, and Guy Vanderhaeghe. The analysis addresses how these writers use strategies from drama and theatre to engage with colonial and postcolonial histories in their novels and create resonant connections with readers. Some of the novels encourage readers to imagine themselves in historical roles through intimate dramatizations inside characters¿ minds and bodies. Others use exaggerated theatrical frames to place readers at a critical distance from representations of history using Brechtian techniques of alienation. This book explores the use of dramatic modes to enliven and reimagine settler-invader history and bring colonial and postcolonial histories closer to the present.

This book argues that ideology is a prism through which the work of Vladimir Nabokov needs to be considered. It is thus the first attempt to foreground questions of ideology and politics within a field that has historically been resistant to such readings.The perception of Nabokov as an apolitical writer is one which the author encouraged throughout the latter part of his career in his non-fictional writings and in the small number of well-rehearsed interviews that he gave. When questions of ideology and politics have arisen in scholarship, they have only been featured in passing or have merely re-confirmed the author¿s self-designation as an «old-fashioned liberal». When we consider that Nabokov lived through some of the most traumatic historical ruptures of the past century then this lack of reference to ideology in the critical literature appears quite revealing.Through the analysis of works which have previously received little attention as well as new perspectives on better known works, this book demonstrates how ideology and politics were ever-present and had an indelible effect on Nabokov's literary aesthetics.