Patrick WhiteThis is the first book-length study which uses recent developments in literary and cultural theory to elucidate Patrick White's life and work. Taking advantage of recently published letters and biographical information, it rethinks White's place in our history and culture. It places White in postwar Australia, arguing that he is best regarded as a writer whose rather conventional modernist writings negotiated the end of colonialist relations with Britain. It addresses connections between White's homoerotic sexuality and his writing head-on, suggesting that many of his texts, notably Voss, attain some of their most powerful effects from being written in and about the closet. Professor During also views Patrick White as an autobiographical writer who drew on his life-history to construct an image of himself as a genius: a strategy which successfully set him at the head of Australian national literature. It is likely that future studies of White will be in debt to this pioneering work of criticism. |
Contents
The Australian | 15 |
The Cultural Critic | 36 |
Sex and the Family | 58 |
Copyright | |
2 other sections not shown
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Aboriginal Alf Dubbo Angus appear artist Aunt's Story Australian culture autobiographical aesthetic banality became become beginning British canonisation career Chariot closet colonial colonialist conventional critique D. H. Lawrence David Marr Dead desire Dubbo early Elyot empty especially expressed family house father Fringe of Leaves gender genius Happy Valley heterosexual Himmelfarb homosexuality Huebsch Hurtle Hurtle's imagine important instance interiority Jolley kind Laura Trevelyan less Letters literary Living means Meroë Mesurier Miss Hare modern modernist mother mother's death move mystical narrative narrator national culture novelist organised Patrick White plot politics possess postcolonial published readers realist rejection relation Riders Roy de Maistre scene sense sexuality social society Solid Mandala spiritual Standish Storm structure suburban Sydney symbols theatre Theodora tion tradition transcendentalism Tree turn Turner Twyborn Affair values Vivisector Voss Voss's White's fictional White's novels White's reputation White's writing women wrote