AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE

the body of literatures, both oral and written, produced in Australia. The first known inhabitants of the continent of Australia, the Australian Aborigines, did not have a written language; their oral literature consisted (and consists) of songs, chants, and stories. This oral tradition comprises mainly creation myths about the Dreamtime, a period both past and present during which the natural environment was created and humanized by mythic beings, the Ancestors. Repetition of these stories on both formal and informal occasions begins in early childhood, and the stories become more complex as a child approaches initiation. By this means an individual not only gained a knowledge of cultural mythology but also, by singing the songs of his region and thus retracing the movements of the Ancestors over the land, learned the location of food and water sources and the places of danger and safetyin essence, the lay of the land. Invisible story tracks and song lines are woven across the continent. During the first hundred years of Australia's colonial history (17881880), Australian written literature consisted of memoirs, descriptive accounts, and fiction written to acquaint the people back in Great Britain with the new land and the challenges it presented. Henry Savery's Quintus Servinton (1831), the first novel published in Australia, was an account of one convict's immigration, based on Savery's own life. Marcus Clarke's His Natural Life (1874) vehemently denounced the conditions in the convict settlements. Rolf Boldrewood (pseudonym of Thomas Browne) wrote popular novels, epitomized in Robbery Under Arms (1888), romanticizing the life of bushrangers and gold miners. Henry Kingsley in The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859) and in other novels reveals the harshness of Australian pioneer life. From 1880 to 1940 a maturing Australian nationalism produced more frankly indigenous novels. The most significant novelist of that period, Henry Handel Richardson (pseudonym of Ethel Florence Lindesay Robertson, ne Richardson), wrote an outstanding trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (191729). It was a starkly realistic novel about the lives of the immigrants in urban Australia. Other concerns of the period included the supposed passing of the Aborigine and the identification of the national character. Miles Franklin honoured the pioneer history of Australia in My Brilliant Career (1901) and expressed the ripening Australian feelings of national pride and respect for country life. The first Australian poets, such as Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall, imitated the inherited style of the English Romantic poetic tradition. A distinct Australian style emerged in Gordon's Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870). A.B. Banjo Paterson's popular ballad poetry and Henry Lawson's short stories about the working class were frequently published in a notable Australian periodical journal, the Bulletin, during the 1890s. After World War II there was an increase in literary activity. The novelist Patrick White dominated the literary scene and was the most important and influential writer Australia had produced to date. After wide acclaim for such works as The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957), and Riders in the Chariot (1961), White received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. Christina Stead, an expatriate writer, wrote novels set in Australia and Europe that revolved around disrupted domestic situations ridden with economic hardship. Other notable writers included Martin Boyd (pseudonym Martin Mills), Randolph Stow, and Thomas Keneally. Notable novelists of the 1970s and '80s included Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley, Shirley Hazzard, C.J. Koch, and David Malouf. Australian poetry and drama also flourished in the postwar Australian literary scene. Judith Wright combined traditional Australian imagery with modernist poetic techniques and ranked, along with A.D. Hope and Douglas Stewart, as one of the leading Australian poets of the 20th century. Drama was perhaps the last literary form in Australia to develop a national character. After the 1950s White, Ray Lawler, Stewart, and Alan Seymour produced tragic plays about Australian social tensions and about the search for national identity that characterizes Australian society. Aboriginal writers such as Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker), Mudooroo Narogin (Colin Johnson), and Jack Davis also made a place in contemporary Australian literary history. the body of literatures, both oral and written, produced in Australia. Perhaps more so than in other countries, the literature of Australia characteristically expresses collective values. Even when the literature deals with the experiences of an individual, those experiences are very likely to be estimated in terms of the ordinary, the typical, the representative. It aspires on the whole to represent integration rather than disintegration. It does not favour the heroicism of individual action unless this shows dogged perseverance in the face of inevitable defeat. Although it may express a strong ironic disapproval of collective mindlessness, the object of criticism is the mindlessness rather than the conformity. This general proposition holds true for both indigenous Australians and those descended from later European arrivals, though the perception of what constitutes the community is quite radically different in these two cases. The white Australian community is united in part by its sense of having derived from foreign cultures, primarily that of England, and in part by its awareness of itself as a settler society with a continuing celebration of pioneer values and a deep attachment to the land. For Aboriginal people in their traditional culture, story, song, and legend served to define allegiances and relationships both to others and to the land that nurtured them. For modern Aboriginals, written literature has been a way of both claiming a voice and articulating a sense of cohesion as a people faced with real threats to the continuance of their culture. Adrian C.W. Mitchell Additional reading Some general sources on Australian literature are William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews, The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd ed. (1994); Laurie Hergenhan (ed.), The Penguin New Literary History of Australia (1988); H.M. Green, A History of Australian Literature: Pure and Applied, rev. by Dorothy Green, 2 vol. (1984); Leonie Kramer (ed.), The Oxford History of Australian Literature (1981); Geoffrey Dutton (ed.), The Literature of Australia, rev. ed. (1976); and A.D. Hope, Australian Literature, 19501962 (1963). Bibliographical sources include Fred Locke and Alan Lawson, Australian Literature: A Reference Guide, 2nd ed. (1980); and E. Morris Miller, Australian Literature: A Bibliography to 1938, Extended to 1950, rev. ed., edited by Frederick T. Macartney (1956). A good general anthology is Leonie Kramer and Adrian Mitchell (eds.), The Oxford Anthology of Australian Literature (1985).Among the books about Aboriginal literature are Ronald M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt, The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia (1989, reissued 1994); J.J. Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia, 2nd ed. (1988); and Roland Robinson, Aboriginal Myths and Legends (1966). Anthologies of Aboriginal literature, with introductory essays, are Jack Davis et al. (eds.), Paperbark: A Collection of Black Australian Writings (1990); R.M.W. Dixon and Martin Duwell (eds.), The Honey-Ant Men's Love Song and Other Aboriginal Song Poems (1990); and Kevin Gilbert (ed.), Inside Black Australia: An Anthology of Aboriginal Poetry (1988).Anthologies of Australian poetry with introductory critical essays include John Tranter and Philip Mead (eds.), The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991); Les A. Murray (compiler), The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse, expanded ed. (1991); and Chris Wallace-Crabbe (ed.), The Golden Apples of the Sun: Twentieth Century Australian Poetry (1980).Among the critical studies of drama are Philip Parsons and Victoria Chance (eds.), Companion to Theatre in Australia (1995); and Peter Fitzpatrick, After The Doll: Australian Drama Since 1955 (1979). Adrian C.W. Mitchell