Jessica Gildersleeve – författare

In recent years, Australian literature has experienced a revival of interest both domestically and internationally. The increasing prominence of work by writers like Christos Tsiolkas, heightened through television and film adaptation, as well as the award of major international prizes to writers like Richard Flanagan, and the development of new, high-profile prizes like the Stella Prize, have all reinvigorated interest in Australian literature both at home and abroad. This Companion emerges as a part of that reinvigoration, considering anew the history and development of Australian literature and its key themes, as well as tracing the transition of the field through those critical debates. It considers works of Australian literature on their own terms, as well as positioning them in their critical and historical context and their ethical and interactive position in the public and private spheres. With an emphasis on literature’s responsibilities, this book claims Australian literary studies as a field uniquely positioned to expose the ways in which literature engages with, produces and is produced by its context, provoking a critical re-evaluation of the concept of the relationship between national literatures, cultures, and histories, and the social function of literary texts.

In recent years, Australian literature has experienced a revival of interest both domestically and internationally. The increasing prominence of work by writers like Christos Tsiolkas, heightened through television and film adaptation, as well as the award of major international prizes to writers like Richard Flanagan, and the development of new, high-profile prizes like the Stella Prize, have all reinvigorated interest in Australian literature both at home and abroad. This Companion emerges as a part of that reinvigoration, considering anew the history and development of Australian literature and its key themes, as well as tracing the transition of the field through those critical debates. It considers works of Australian literature on their own terms, as well as positioning them in their critical and historical context and their ethical and interactive position in the public and private spheres. With an emphasis on literature’s responsibilities, this book claims Australian literary studies as a field uniquely positioned to expose the ways in which literature engages with, produces and is produced by its context, provoking a critical re-evaluation of the concept of the relationship between national literatures, cultures, and histories, and the social function of literary texts.

The persistent popularity of the detective narrative, new obsessions with psychological and supernatural disturbances, as well as the resurgence of older narratives of mystery or the Gothic all constitute a vast proportion of contemporary film and television productions. New ways of watching film and television have also seen a reinvigoration of this ‘most domestic of media’. But what does this ‘domesticity’ of genre and media look like ‘Down Under’ in the twenty.first century? This collection traces representations of the Gothic on both the small and large screens in Australia and New Zealand in the twenty.first century. It attends to the development and mutation of the Gothic in these post. or neo.colonial contexts, concentrating on the generic innovations of this temporal and geographical focus.

Explores Elizabeth Bowen’s significant contribution to twentieth-century literary theoryProvides new avenues for research in Bowen studies in ways that are concerned primarily with Bowen’s perception of writing and narrativeMoves away from perceptions of Bowen’s writing tied to existing ideological categories, such as viewing her work through a lens of psychoanalysis, modernism, or Irish or British history and which emphasise Bowen’s innovation not as central to our understanding of the changes happening in twentieth-century literature and history, but as instead a point of ‘difficulty’Recognises Bowen’s innovation, experimentation and her impact on her contemporaries and literary descendants From experiments in language and identity to innovations in the novel, the short story and life narratives, the contributors discuss the way in which Bowen’s work straddles, informs and defies the existing definitions of modernist and postmodernist literature which dominate twentieth-century writing. The eleven chapters present new scholarship on Bowen’s inventiveness and unique writing style and attachment to objects, covering topics such as queer adolescents, housekeeping, female fetishism, habit and new technologies such as the telephone.

From experiments in language and identity to innovations in the novel, the short story and life narratives, the contributors discuss the ways in which Bowen's work straddles, informs and defies the existing definitions of modernist and postmodernist literature which dominate twentieth-century writing. The eleven chapters present new scholarship on Bowen's inventiveness and unique writing style and its attachment to objects, covering topics such as queer adolescents, housekeeping, female fetishism, habit and new technologies such as the telephone.

Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973) has been called "a ghost story for adults." Certainly, in contrast to the more explicitly violent and bloodthirsty horror films of the 1970s, Don't Look Now seems of an entirely different order. Yet this supernaturally inflected tale of a child's accidental drowning, and her parents' desperate simultaneous recoil from her death and pursuit of her ghost, Don't Look Now is horrific at every turn. This book argues for it as a particular kind of horror film, one which depends utterly on the narrative of trauma-on the horror of unknowing, of seeing too late, and of the failures of paternal authority and responsibility. This study works to position Don't Look Now within a discourse of midcentury anxiety narratives primarily existing in literary texts. In this context, it represents a cross over or a hinge between literature and film of the 1970s, and the ways in which the women's ghost story or uncanny story turns the horror film into a cultural commentary on the failures of the modern family.

This edited collection aims to respond to dominant perspectives on twenty-first-century war by exploring how the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Wars on Terror are represented and remembered outside of the US framework.

This edited collection aims to respond to dominant perspectives on twenty-first-century war by exploring how the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Wars on Terror are represented and remembered outside of the US framework.

Elizabeth Bowen and the Writing of Trauma analyses the treatment of memory and the past in Bowen’s writing through the lens of trauma theory. It draws on the theories of Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Sigmund Freud, and Cathy Caruth, to propose that Bowen’s work is best understood through the psychological, narratological, and linguistic effects of trauma in her fiction. Bowen’s writing complicates existing deconstructive and psychoanalytic models of trauma and literature, and testifies to the responsibility of survival and the ethics of bearing witness.