Opening the Book New Essays On New Zealand Writing

by Williams, Mark; Leggott, Michele

• ISBN13: 9781869401153
• ISBN10: 1869401158
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-06-01
• Publisher: Auckland University Press

Summary

Over the last three decades New Zealand literature has changed radically as New Zealand has become more diverse and more independent of its colonial origins. In place of a small literary culturenationalist, realist, Pakeha and masculine in outlookwe now find a variety of styles, kinds, voices. In response to these changes, writing about New Zealand literature has also changed. Since the mid 1980s, criticism in New Zealand has sought to come to terms with feminism, culture studies, postmodernism, post-colonialism indigenous writing. This book collects new essays by writers and critics who have taken part in this process of assimilation and debate. The aim is not to announce a new orthodoxy or to impose some imported critical methodology on local writing. Rather the book shows how some well-known New Zealand authorsMansfield, Sargeson, Hyde, Framecan be read and reinterpreted from a number of critical perspectives and how different types of writing can be freshly reconsidered. The essays are lively, various, challenging. They re-examine New Zealand's past, question long-held assumptions, analyze the contemporary scene, and indicate new directions.

Author Biography

Mark Williams is senior lecturer in English at the University of Canterbury.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. 7
Introduction	p. 9
'The Sod Under My Feet': Katherine Mansfield	p. 31
The Childish Empire and the Empire of Children: Colonial and Alternative Dominions in Robin Hyde's Check to Your King and Wednesday's Children	p. 49
Frank at Last	p. 68
Sacrifice and Signification in the Poetry of Allen Curnow	p. 83
James K. Baxter and the Dialect of the Tribe	p. 105
Scandalously In-Different? Janet Frame, Postmodernism and Gender	p. 123
Keri Hulme and 'Love's Wounded Beings'	p. 140
The Old Man's Example: Manhire in the Seventies	p. 162
Patricia Grace and Complete Communication	p. 188
'Bliss', and Why Ignorance Won't Do: The Use of Criticism and Theory in Current Reading Practices	p. 211
'History' in the New Zealand Novel and Film Today	p. 232
Holding the Line: Contested Contexts in Recent Verse	p. 249
Opening the Archive: Robin Hyde, Eileen Duggan and the Persistence of Record	p. 266
Re-Playing and Dis-Playing the Nation: New Zealand Drama	p. 294
A Fantastic Tale	p. 307
Bibliography	p. 317
Contributors	p. 329
Index	p. 332
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