Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, Discipline of English, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-210).

Thesis (M.A.) (Hons.)-Writing) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1999.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Western Australia, 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 9, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 246-263).

Many Australian novelists since the late 1890s have written about dance in varied and interesting ways. Characters in many Australian novels are portrayed dancing on stage, dancing within the context of their everyday lives, watching corroborees, reminiscing about social dance events in distant homelands or gyrating under flashing lights at discos and raves. In other instances the word “dance” (or an associated term) is used metaphorically to convey actual or imagined movement such as the wind dancing in trees, or thoughts dancing in characters’ minds. Although representations of dance in Australian novels portray qualities such as vitality, beauty and transcendence, this thesis argues that they also elucidate a shadowland of pain and suffering and sometimes an uncertainty about Australian culture and identity. Indigenous dancers are scrutinised critically by non-Indigenous spectators. Despite the bright lights and glamour of their world, professional dancers are shown to struggle against the persistence of the cultural cringe. Unflattering notions of class and gender taint the excitement and romance of social dance occasions, migrant characters associate dance with painful memories of abandoned homelands and dancers performing professionally or privately risk being labelled mad, feminine or homosexual (or all three). The metaphorical use of the word dance does not always portray vital movement but often conveys heaviness, awkwardness and even imminent collapse. Descriptions of dance are minimalist to the point where the dance almost disappears from the reader’s view. As well as making dance in Australian novels visible, the investigation conducted in this thesis sharpens awareness of its negative or “shadow” side and challenges the widespread critical glorification of the presence of dance in literature more generally. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis examines the life and career of Bret Easton Ellis, and the influences of his work on the author's development as a writer. Part one encapsulates a novel written specifically for this thesis. 'Call waiting' is a harsh look at modern friendships, the role of work in these relationships and the proliferation of shallow communication through the advent of email. A critical reflection follows, examining the process that led to the novel's creation. Three specific areas are focussed on: the direct influence of Ellis' novel 'The rules of attraction' on the overall themes of 'Call waiting', the realisation of the project and the various editing changes and narrative developments that arose during the writing of the novel, and an examination of the inspiration behind the novel's creation. Part two considers Ellis' role in the literary world of the 1980s, his own complicity in the creation of a career as a celebrity author, and the carefully manufactured persona Ellis presents to the world. In Part three the thesis is concluded with a close analysis of the publication of Ellis' controversial novel 'American psycho'. This chapter explores the negative publicity the novel attracted and the possible causes of the ensuing backlash against the author. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Wet : a Project is a ficto-critical essay, a writer's diary, concerned with language, trauma, the body and image. A complement to Wet, it is greatly informed by Probyn's model of 'belonging' as a writing subject, and psychoanalytic theorisation such as Gibb's analysis of psychosomatic speech, Pines' and Anzieu's conceptualisations of the 'skin ego', Kristeva's account of sensation and its relation to language and Lacan's development of the ego in the mirror stage. In addition, it engages Herman's analysis of trauma and Scarry's account of pain, and their relationships to language, the body and subjectivity. Interspersed with autobiographical accounts, Wet : a Project explores the milieus, spaces and specific geographical sites in which trauma, language, forms of identity, desire, belonging and becoming, emerge or assert their visibility. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

At the heart of this exegesis is the city-bush gap and the rivalry and stereotypes that gap has generated. I acknowledge how and why our national identity evolved from the writing of the 1890s but I argue that most current artists, particularly novelists, have failed to incorporate the ongoing cultural, societal and industrial changes that have occurred since, particularly in the last thirty years. I assert that the majority of artists still refer to and draw inspiration from established, inaccurate myths and stereotypes rather than the bush and Australian characters of today. Through examining three texts, Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection (Picador, Sydney, 1999), Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded (Random House, Sydney, 1995) and Silences Long Gone (Picador, Sydney, 1998) by Anson Cameron, I also point out how most artists in general have failed to keep pace with changes in the bush city cross-culture. My exegesis attempts to give an account of some deficiencies in contemporary Australian literature. In the creative component of this project, Summer at Mount Hope (Duffy and Snellgrove, Sydney, 2005), I write, as did Anson Cameron in his book, Silences Long Gone, (Pan Macmillan, 1998) of a bush (in 1894) where city and bush rely on each other and technology pushes into the bush uniting city and bush, thus enhancing the economy, the cross cultural interdependence and advancing the commonality between the two. I replace stereotypical characters with less predictable characters whose traits sit easily in either bush or city culture and skew the Traditionalist role of bush and city.

My concern in Dead Drunk is not simply the subject matter of death, it is rather with the representation of drunks in the form of fictional phantoms in The Glass Canoe and Bliss as rendering the death drive visible. Close scrutiny of the representation of the drunk in Australian fiction, as discussed in relation to The Glass Canoe, and Bliss reveals a ‘constant recurrence of the same thing’ rendered uncannily visible. On inspection, what becomes visible is recurring deaths and subsequent resurrections. For the ghostly Australian drunk there is always the possibility of resurrection, but that resurrection is usually in the form of another drink. A drink promises resurrection, but instead delivers a return or recurrence of the drunken, ghostly state. / The presence of drinking and drunks in Australian fiction can be described as a haunting, the ghostly drunks as repetition of an anachronistic past. It is the repetition of the representations of drunks as ghostly presences in Australian fiction that is telling. Utilising Sigmund Freud’s theories developed in ‘The Uncanny’ (1919) and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), I propose that if the uncanny is an encounter with one’s origins and the death drive is a backward looking return to origins; the drunks are a past that is repeatedly encountered in an uncanny moment. Utilising the modalities of the uncanny in regards to The Glass Canoe reveals the guises of the drunken ghosts. Making reference to an Australian colonial past, founded on intoxicant use and abuse the dissertation suggests alcoholism as a white man’s dreaming. A discussion of Bliss links the uncanny ghosts to a registration or surfacing of the death drive. In conclusion I suggest the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation as both an explanation for and a release from the symptomatic repetition. / Floundering, the creative work, is an extract from a novel in progress. The section presented is the opening to the novel. The narrative unfolds during one day, New Year’s Eve, and involves the interactions between the two brothers Jordy and Tom, and Old Fat. Loretta, the boys’ absent mother, haunts the novel and drives the narrative. Although the creative work does not explicitly depict dead drunks as discussed in the dissertation, the theory has by necessity permeated the creative, and the creative permeated the theory, forming a chiasma – a crossing over between strands of thought.

[Truncated abstract] This thesis argues that the non-representation and under-representation of mothering in contemporary Australian literature reflects a much wider cultural practice of silencing the mother-as-subject position and female experiences as a whole. The thesis encourages women writers to pay more attention to the subjective experiences of mothering, so that women’s writing, in particular writing on those aspects of women’s lives that are silenced, of which motherhood is one, can begin to refigure motherhood discourses. This thesis examines mother-as-subject from three perspectives: mothering as a corporeal experience, mothering as a psychological experience, and the articulations and silences of mothering-as-subject. It engages with feminist, postmodern and fictocritical theories in its discussion of motherhood as a discourse through these perspectives. In particular, the thesis employs the theoretical works of postmodern feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva in this discussion . . . A fictional narrative also runs through the critical discussion on motherhood. This narrative, Catherine’s Story, gives a personal and immediate voice to the mother-as-subject perspective. In keeping with the nature of fictocriticism, strict textual boundaries between criticism and fiction are blurred. The two modes of writing interact and in the process inform and critique each other.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 2001. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, March, 2001. Bibliography : leaves [278]-282.