The problem with which this thesis is concerned is the relationship between literature and politics. By means of a biographical and historical study two significant writers of the 1930s/40s I examine the ways in which the pressures of Depression, the threat of fascism and the onset of war influenced Australian writing. In particular, I ask whether the political issues of the period affected what these authors wrote and how they wrote it. My conclusion is that pressure of political concern caused significant personal, philosophical and political changes in Barnard and Davison, and that it affected both the genre in which they wrote and the content of their fiction. They turned from fiction to cultural commentary, historical writing, political pamphleteering and activism. They utilised short fiction as a means of discussing their worries about the state of the world and in order to promote values they felt threatened. When they returned to longer fiction their work bore, to differing degrees, in its ideas, arguments and imagery, the influence of their political engagement. More generally, I conclude that liberal humanism was the major animating philosophy of writers in the 1930s and that their concern with political issues grew from their conviction that western liberal democracy was the most fruitful soil for the production of art, a climate of freedom which they felt threatened by both fascism and war. This anxiety is the most important factor in both their politicisation and the work they did under the latter???s influence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/257876 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Creators | Darby, Robert, English, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales - Australian Defence Force Academy. Dept. of English |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Robert Darby, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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