ACL 1001 |
Lecture 6 by Ian Syson |
|
Australia/NZ construct similarities between Aust and NZ.
at the expense of differences.
It is a mistake to think that Australian and NZ cultures share
NZ Literary culture One point of similarity though is in the comparable histories of literary culture in both countries. In both countries literature is seen as a marginal. In both countries literary culture had to fight for recognition around the middle of the 20th century. One of the products of that kind of marginality is intensity. The late poet John Forbes once described Australian literary debates as resembling knife fights in a telephone box.
Perhaps Australian literary culture is such a small and minor part of Australian life that its debates can assume what appear to be disproportionate dimensions. Arguments and sometimes even physical fights occur over matters of literary judgement. Though there have been literary squabbles that have taken on a larger significance. Without denigrating the importance of the literary issues involved, these debates quickly exceeded the literary culture from which they sprung and became significant on other levels. They only became significant because of the issues they allowed to emerge
By comparison with Australia , New Zealand literary culture is tiny. This might well mean that its debates can look all the more silly, cramped and nasty. Prentice talks about the energetic literary culture focused on Auckland University An interesting example of the intensity is discussed by Kai Jensen in his Whole men : the masculine tradition in New Zealand literature , in February 1984 a group of women seized the playwright Mervyn Thompson and tied him to a tree in the Auckland Domain. They painted 'rapist' on his car. As literary criticism this was quite severe. Thompson had been accused of having sexual relationships with his students � relationships which would have been considered unremarkable in the 50s and 60s. According to Kai Jensen, this act was an inevitable conflict resulting from the development of literary feminism in an overwhelmingly male and masculine literary culture. It is also an act that set the tone for some subsequent literary debate in NZ: an endemic conflict between young feminists and older literary men. NZ literature has been, until very recently, even more dominated by male writers and critics than ozlit. It has been a blokey culture. Significantly, and unlike most other literary cultures, some working class voices achieved prominence:
And according to Jensen, themes like
dominate this blokey canon. To what extent are these themes present in The Uncle's Story?
Cf �Middleton's Rouseabout' by Henry Lawson J.C Reid's history of the NZ novel shows how very few women novelists have achieved attention, especially in the post war period.
Yet writers like Keri Hulme, Janet Frame and to a lesser extent Patricia Grace have been at the forefront of contemporary NZ writing. It's as if the introduction of women's writing into the NZ literary landscape was a particularly difficult but defining moment. Not only was the dominant NZ literary culture male, it was also European or Pakeha and middle-class Maori voices were rare:
Sandra Tawake, �Transforming the Insider-Outsider Perspective: Postcolonial Fiction from the Pacific' (2000)
Representations of Pacific Islanders, and more specifically Maori, in the terms Tawake outlines illustrates the way in which colonial discourse constructed the Other. Maori difference (read: inferiority) in the European world-view was the basis on which their colonization was justified. Not only were texts that contained such representations read in the �mother country' , the �canon of English literature' was used within the colonies to reinforce England 's superiority. Phases of New Zealand Writing Pre-1950s � Katharine Mansfield � European focus to short stories; no mention of Maori culture 1950 � Charles Brasch � claimed that was no New Zealand literature 1960s/1970s � era of political radicalism 1980s
New Zealand was starting to make a cultural impact in other artistic realms (film etc) Added to this was the emergence of what Prentice calls a �new criticism' that included feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, post-structuralism and later postcolonialism and postmodernism. The Auckland English Department was the source of the �new energy' surrounding New Zealand literature. However, as Prentice points out, most English departments
Since the late 1980s, there has been a focus on postcolonial literature within English departments. Postcolonial theory is an oppositional reading practice for reading literature from countries such as New Zealand that deal with issues borne out of the experience of colonisation. New Zealand achieved Independence from Britain in 1911 and so entered a postcolonial phase in which the imperial power receded but the culture implanted continued to have powerful resonances. Even as postcolonial subjects throw off the shackles of the imperial past, a colonial legacy remains. Davinia Thornley points out,
Although the term postcolonialism may imply that colonialism has ended, post-colonial theory recognises the complexity within (former) colonies which may be postcolonial in an official sense but continue to treat indigenous people in ways that reflect the practices of the colonisers. Maori Literary Renaissance 1960s � writers such as Patricia Grace and Witi Ihimaera � call for a return to Maori traditions and Maori language Maori land and cultural rights movements: importance placed on indigenous unity; writing was considered an important medium through which unity could be expressed. The Maori Renaissance
British abandonment of its colonies post-1960s:
Distinctiveness of Maori Writing in the 1970s/1980s It appeared in book form Was paid attention by non-Maori readership For Maori,
|