(Post)colonial ambivalences : Christina Stead and Janet Frame

This thesis is an evaluative comparison of two significant writers, the Australian Christina Stead, and New Zealander Janet Frame. In a detailed analysis of the novels, the writerly ambivalences of each author are explored. Their writings are revealed to be creative of new possibilities for female (post)colonial agency.

Papers from Marrakech : a post-colonial reading of western women's travel writing in North Africa and the Middle East

This thesis takes the form of a collection of theoretical and fictional documents comprising a journal, letters and essays sent home to Australia by a woman travelling in Morocco. In different modes, these papers examine issues of colonialism, gender and desire in western women's travel writing about North Africa and the Middle East.

Children's literature in a global age : transnational and local identities

This essay explores the concept of transnationalism, defi ning this term in relation both to the lived experience of transnational subjects, and to transnational texts for children. It argues that rhetorics of globalization have over-emphasized the impact and signifi cance of global cultural and economic fl ows, although the production of children’s books is to some extent shaped by the internationalization of publishing houses and markets. The concept of transnationalism provides a way of thinking about how children’s texts address and are informed by diverse, complex infl uences, sometimes from a variety of cultures and languages. Transnationalism is not a new phenomenon but is visible in colonial texts which are shaped both by the particular, local ideologies of colonial nations, and also by the common concerns and interests of such nations. The essay draws on two contemporary texts to illustrate the workings of transnationalism: the fi lm Howl’s Moving Castle, and Shaun Tan’s picture book The Arrival. It concludes by considering the concept of transnational literacy as a way of approaching scholarship and teaching in children’s literature.

Colonial feminism and Australian literary culture in Ethel and Lilian Turner's the Parthenon (1889–92)

The Parthenon is a unique example of a colonial Australian magazine published for girl readers by two aspirant writers, Ethel and Lilian Turner. In addition to its domestic content, typical of women's magazines, it also sought to contribute to nascent Australian literary culture. This article locates the Parthenon within the history of colonial women's publishing and literary culture, and situates its content within the context of the Woman Movement of the period. It reads the Parthenon's telling picture of young women's perceptions of colonial literary culture and of the need to balance literary aspirations with domestic responsibilities through the lens of the “expediency feminism” advocated by the Dawn, a women's magazine published by Louisa Lawson from 1888. The article argues that the Parthenon's superficially conservative opinion of women's supreme calling being in the home rather than the newspaper office or university library was in alignment with the arguments made by the Woman Movement to advocate for women's greater participation in the public sphere. The comparison of these contemporaneous monthly publications written and produced by women enables an understanding of the ways in which late nineteenth-century attempts to encourage women's careers and independence were grounded in domesticity.

The ‘Australian Girl’ and the domestic ideal in colonial women’s fiction

The vast majority of novels and periodicals read by colonial Australian girls were written and published in Britain. ‘Daughters of the Southern Cross’ were more likely to have access to the Girl’s Own Paper by subscription or to imported fictions that had proven popular with British girl readers than any locally produced depictions of girlhood. From the 1880s, however, Australian authors produced several milestone fictions of girlhood for both adult and juvenile audiences. Rosa Praed's An Australian Heroine (1880) and Catherine Martin’s An Australian Girl (1890)  gave voice to the lived experience of Australia for young women, and their publication in Britain contributed to an emergent reciprocal transpacific flow of literary culture.

Two canonical Australian novels that focus on the maturation of girl protagonists who live on bush homesteads were also published in this period. Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians (1894) and Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901) feature intelligent girls who are not able to be effectively socialised to embrace domesticity. Turner’s Judy Woolcot is distinct among her six siblings as a plucky girl who instigates trouble, while Franklin’s aspiring writer Sybylla Melvyn is informed that ‘girls are the helplessest, uselessest, troublesomest little creatures in the world.’

The 1890s saw an agricultural depression in Australia that only fuelled the urban perpet-uation of the idealised and nationalistic bushman myth in literary and popular culture. The ubiquity of the myth problematised any attempt to situate women heroically within the nation outside of the home. British fictional imaginings of Australian girls lauded their lack of conformity and physical abilities and often showed them bravely defending the family property with firearms. In contrast, Australian domestic fiction, this chapter argues, is unable to accommodate bracing female heroism, postulating ambiguous outcomes at best for heroines who deviate from the feminine ideal.

Judy’s grandmother describes her ‘restless fire’ as something that ‘would either make a noble, daring, brilliant woman of her’, or ‘would flame up higher and higher and consume her’. Turner does not allow Judy’s unconventionality to prosper. Instead, she is killed by a falling gum tree while saving the life of her brother, leaving the future fulfilment of the domestic ideal to her sister, Meg, whose subsequent story occupies Little Mother Meg (1902). Franklin’s Sybylla expresses her inability to be content with the simple pleasures of keeping a home, and this informs her decision to reject a marriage proposal from a wealthy suitor. The novel’s indeterminate conclusion does not allow fulfilment of Sybylla’s writing aspirations, situating her outside the feminine ideal yet not affirming the merits of her desire to reject married life.

While Sharyn Pearce suggests that Judy’s tragic end follows a narrative pattern that sup-ports the glorification of male heroes and renders ‘over-reaching women’ as ‘noble failures’, the novel might also productively be read within the context of other fictions featuring girl protagonists of the period, such as Praed and Martin's novels. This chapter makes the case that Turner and Franklin’s thwarted heroines critique the containment of Australian girls to the banalities of the home by exposing the negative and uncertain outcomes for those who desire the freedoms and aspirations permitted to boys and men. Unlike British fictions that champion adventurous girls, these Australian fictions critique the continuation of gendered restrictions in the colonies by proposing that girls who desire excitement and independence ‘should have been…boy[s]’ (as Sybylla’s mother remarks).

Literatura e debate pós-colonial em A história do bando de Kelly, de Peter Carey

Pós-graduação em Letras - IBILCE

O latim no contexto letrado do Brasil Colonial

O Grupo de Pesquisa A Escrita no Brasil Colonial estuda, ao longo dos últimos dez anos, documentos literários e não literários no contexto lusitano e brasileiro dos séculos XVI ao XVIII. Há muitos registros de textos escritos em latim, nessa época, que dialogam com os problemas da terra, da literatura, da religião, das atividades artesanais e que foram produzidos tanto tanto em manifestações coletivas, como as academias histórico-literárias, quanto individualmente, por autores que optaram por expor suas idéias nesse idioma. Apresentaremos, neste texto, alguns letrados do Brasil Colonial que recorreram ao latim como expressão literária.

Da libertinagem no Brasil colonial: a construção da imagem amoral das mulheres na literatura de viagem (1611-1808)

Pós-graduação em História - FCHS

The Nightmare of Actual Identity": Franco-Algerian Literature after Liberation"

In this thesis I examine the issues of postcolonial Algerian identity expressed in literature, and the difficulty of defining an Algerian identity independent of French influence. I analyze and contextualize three novels (Le Polygone etoile by Kateb Yacine,L'Amour, la fantasia by Assia Djebar, and Le Village de l'allemand ou le journal des freres Schiller) representative of their respective periods. I explore the evolution of expressions of identity through post-liberation Algeria. The years immediately following decolonization are marked by the effort to return to aprecolonial blank slate, an effort that Yacine cautions against. The 1980s and 1990s are most concerned with re-inserting Algeria into the Western historical discourse, and the most recent literature moves beyond decolonization to discuss the current Islamistchallenge and immigration. Among the pertinent issues are language, oral vs. written traditions, the often blatant absence of Algerians and women from the accounts in the French colonial archives, and, of course, the Self/Other binary. I have found that theserepresentative authors and texts use asynchronic time, fragmented narrative, re-written history, and expressions of violence in an attempt to cope with the colonial period and decolonization. I show that these authors provide a commentary on those who have triedto erase their French side, but with little success. Ultimately, though in different ways, each author writes that Algerians much accept their French past and move beyond it,rather than fighting their collective history.

Transatlantic Echoes. Alexander von Humboldt in World Literature

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was a world traveler, bestselling writer, and versatile researcher, a European salon sensation, and global celebrity. Yet the enormous literary echo he generated has remained largely unexplored. Humboldt inspired generations of authors, from Goethe and Byron to Enzensberger and García Márquez, to reflect on cultural difference, colonial ideology, and the relation between aesthetics and science. This collection of one-hundred texts features tales of adventure, travel reports, novellas, memoirs, letters, poetry, drama, screenplays, and even comics—many for the first time in English. The selection covers the foundational myths and magical realism of Latin America, the intellectual independence of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and Whitman in the United States, discourses in Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, East, and West Germany, as well as recent films and fiction. This documented source book addresses scholars in cultural and postcolonial studies as well as readers in history and comparative literature.