Middlebrow modernism : Eleanor Dark's interwar fiction / Melinda J. Cooper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cooper, Melinda, author.

Series:

Sydney studies in Australian literature.

Sydney studies in Australian literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dark, Eleanor, 1901-1985--Criticism and interpretation.

Dark, Eleanor.

Authors, Australian--20th century.

Authors, Australian.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (291 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Sydney : Sydney University Press, 2022.

Summary:

Eleanor Dark (1901-1985) is one of Australia's most significant novelists, and her work is currently enjoying a revival of critical interest. This book will provide the first sole-authored critical survey of Dark's fiction to be published in over four decades. Focusing on Dark's ten novels - Slow Dawning (1932), Prelude to Christopher (1934), Return to Coolami (1936), Sun Across the Sky (1937), Waterway (1938), The Timeless Land (1941), The Little Company (1945), Storm of Time (1948), No Barrier (1953) and Lantana Lane (1959) - as well as other writings that have tended to be overlooked, such as her juvenilia, magazine fiction, and unpublished manuscripts, this book will position Dark's work as important for the study of Australian literature, global modernism and world literature.

Contents:

Intro

Half title

Title

Acknowledgements

Contents

Introduction Middlebrow Modernism: Negotiating Settler-colonial Modernity, Regional Cosmopolitanism and Liberal Humanism

Eleanor Dark and Interwar Australia

Regional Cosmopolitanism

Settler-colonial Modernity

Eleanor Dark and the Transnational Turn

Relational and Uneven

Middlebrow Modernism

Middlebrow Modernism in Interwar Australia

Mapping Eleanor Dark's Middlebrow Modernism

"Whether You Deal in Books or Peanut Brittle": Writing for the Popular Market in Eleanor Dark's 1920s Magazine Fiction and Slow Dawning (1932)

Reframing Eleanor Dark's 1920s Fiction

Technological Modernity

The Modern Woman

"The Ladies' Circulating Library": Eleanor Dark and Her Father

"My Unspeakable Slow Dawning"

A New Kind of Citizen: The Middle-class, Professional Woman

The Changing Nature of Marriage and Romance

Valerie and the "Army of Women": The Individual and the Collective

The Technical Expert

Race and Class

Conclusion

"A Masterpiece of Camouflage": Australian Modernism and Prelude to Christopher (1934)

Reading Modernism and Modernity into Cultural Nationalism

Eugenics, Modernism and the Modern Woman

Stylistic Hybridity in Prelude to Christopher

The Quarantined Island

Prelude to Christopher and the Middlebrow

Prelude to Christopher and Racial Otherness

Conclusion: "Portrait of Linda"

"Like the Lens of a Camera": Commercial Culture, Settler Belonging and Middlebrow Modernism in Return to Coolami (1936)

Modernism and its Relations

Return to Coolami and mass culture

Settler Vision

Modern(ist) Vision

Seeing in Motion

Adjusted Vision

Middlebrow Modernist Time and Memory

Modernist Timelessness

Ambivalence About Modernity

Conclusion.

"The Everlasting Voice of Man": Modernist Aesthetic Utopianism and Sun Across the Sky (1937)

"Writers of the Individualistic and Liberalizing Type"

Sun Across the Sky and the Artist

Vitalism and Art

Mass Civilisation

The Middlebrow Cultural Critic

Mapping the Community

The Threat of the Global

The Limits of Aesthetic Utopianism

The Ethics of the Middlebrow Novel

"The Vast, the Bewildering, the Menacing Problems of all Humanity": Regional Cosmopolitanism and the Political Middlebrow in Waterway (1938)

Cosmopolitan Humanism

"Let's Go and Join the Revolution": Aesthetic Utopianism and Politics

Ethical Encounters and the Face-to-face

Aesthetic Utopianism and the Second World War

Sydney Harbour and Interwar Modernity: "Haled With Glamour and Romance"

"A Menace, a Terror, Death Waiting"

"An Exercise in Imagination": The Limits of Empathy in The Timeless Land (1941)

"Throw[ing] Open the Windows of Our Imagination": Writing History and Fiction

Writing the Nation and the World

Middlebrow Orientalism

Race and Class in The Timeless Land

Critiquing Capitalist Modernity

Primitivism in The Timeless Land

Primitivism and Settler Belonging

Future Directions of The Timeless Land

Conclusion: News from Australia

Works Cited

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print record.

Other Format:

Print version: Cooper, Melinda J. Middlebrow Modernism

ISBN:

9781743328576

1743328575

9781743328668

1743328664

OCLC:

1345592833