Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian culture / edited by Stephanie Trigg.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Trigg, Stephanie, editor.

Series:

Making the Middle Ages ; Volume 8.

Making the Middle Ages ; Volume 8

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Australia--Civilization.

Australia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (302 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Carlton, Victoria : Melbourne University Press, 2006.

Summary:

This collection opens up a new field of academic and general interest: Australian medievalism. That is, the heritage and continuing influence of medieval and gothic themes, ideas and cultural practices. Geographically removed from Europe, and distinguished by its eighteenth-century colonial settlement, Australia is a fascinating testing-ground on which to explore the cultural residues of medieval and gothic tradition. These traditions take a distinctive form, once they have been 'transported' to a different topographical setting, and a cultural context whose relationship with Europe has always been dynamic and troubled. Early colonists attempted to make the unfamiliar landscape of Australia familiar by inscribing it with European traditions: since then, a diverse range of responses and attitudes to the medieval and gothic past have been played out in Australian culture, from traditional forms of historical reconstruction through to playful postmodernist pastiche. These essays examine the early narratives of Australian 'discovery' and the settlement of what was perceived as a hostile, gothic environment; exercises of medieval revivalism and association consonant with the British nineteenth-century rediscovery of chivalric ideals and aesthetic, spiritual and architectural practices and models; the conscious invocation and interrogation of medieval and gothic tropes in Australian fiction and poetry, including children's literature; the transformation of those tropes in fantasy, role-playing games and subcultural groups; and finally, the implication of the medieval past for discussions of Australian nationalism.

Contents:

Intro

Medievalism AND THE Gothic IN Australian Culture

Contents

Acknowledgements

Illustrations

Introduction: Medieval and Gothic Australia

Part I Re-writing Medieval and Gothic Literature

Marcus Clarke, Gothic, Romance

Fiction and 'terra nullius'

The Pleasures of Melancholy and the Quest for Home

Romantic Medievalism and Gothic Horror: Wordsworth, Tennyson, Kendall, and the Dilemmas of Antipodean Gothic

Visions of Paradise

Romantic Medievalism

'On the Brink of the Beautiful'

The Spirit of the Past

An Antipodean Brotherhood

'I See a Strangeness': Francis Webb's Norfolk and English Catholic Medievalism

'What frightens you must be a ruin, and waste'7

'History halts but one hour'28

'I see a strangeness stretch and flap a wing'53

'Where No Knight in Armour Has Ever Trod': The Arthurianism of Jessica Anderson's Heroines

'Dolorous Death and Departing': Nostalgia and Loss in Anderson's Fictions

'She Has a Lovely Face': Arthurian Identifications

'That Region of my Mind': Cultural Legacy and Sovereignty

Australian 'Everymans': Post-Medieval Spiritual Adventurers

Everyman and the Australian Theatre

Dulcie Deamer: 'Easter' (1933)

Randolph Stow: 'To the Islands' (1958, rev. edn 1981)

Kate Grenville: 'The Idea of Perfection' (1999)

Conclusions

Medievalism and Memory Work: Archer's Folly and the Gothic Revival Pile

Medievalism as Heritage: Australian Children's Books

Part II Gothic Landscapes and Medieval Communities

Passing through Customs: William Dampier's Medieval Baggage

Rebuilding the Middle Ages: Medievalism in Australian Architecture

St Mary's Cathedral

The University of Sydney

The ANZ Bank, Collins Street, Melbourne

Montsalvat

The Middle Ages through the Australian Looking Glass.

The Daughters of the Court: Women's Medievalism in Nineteenth-Century Melbourne

'A Place of Horror and Vast Solitude': Medieval Monasticism and the Australian Landscape

Tarrawarra Abbey

Performing Medieval Monasticism

Space, Solitude and Redemption

Medievalism as Historical Choice

A New Sort of Castle in the Air: Medievalist Communities in Contemporary Australia

Melbourne Made Medieval

Re-creating Medieval Communities in Australia

A Castle Co-operative in Yass

Idealizing the Medieval and Medievalizing the Australian Experience

'The Only Limitation Is Your Imagination': Quantifying the Medieval and Other Fantasies in Dungeons and Dragons

Limited Imaginations

Simulating the Middle Ages (and More)

Quantifying the Medieval and Other Fantasies

Entrepreneurial Adventurers

The Danger of Performance

The 'UnAustralian' Goth: Notes Towards a Dislocated National Subject

Rituals of Nationhood: Medievalism, Neo-Traditionalism and Republicanism

Ritual Practice and the Modern Invention of Tradition

Modern Republicanism Meets Modern Medievalism

The Cultural Power of Dead Symbolism?

Select Bibliography

Contributors

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780522865844

0522865844

OCLC:

1090985653