Cyclone Country: The Language of Place and Disaster in Australian Literature

by Chrystopher J. Spicer

Overview

The storm has become a universal trope in the literature of crisis, revelation and transformation. It can function as a trope of place, of apocalypse and epiphany, of cultural mythos and story, and of people and spirituality.

This book explores the connections between people, place and environment through the image of cyclones within fiction and poetry from the Australian state of Queensland, the northern coast of which is characterized by these devastating storms. Analyzing a range of works including Alexis Wright's Carpentaria, Patrick White's The Eye of the Storm, and Vance Palmer's Cyclone it explains the cyclone in the Queensland literary imagination as an example of a cultural response to weather in a unique regional place. It also situates the cyclones that appear in Queensland literature within the broader global context of literary cyclones.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476640501
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	09/09/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	210
File size:	6 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Chrystopher J. Spicer has written extensively about Australian and American arts and culture. He is currently a cultural historian and adjunct senior research fellow at James Cook University, in Queensland, Australia.
Chrystopher J. Spicer has written extensively about Australian and American film and history. He teaches writing and communication at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by Stephen Torre
Introduction
One. The Cyclone Written into the Language of Place
Two. The Naming of the Disaster
Three. “Big wind, he waiting there”: Vance Palmer’s Cyclones of Apocalypse and Their Power of Revelation
Four. “Touching the edges of cyclones”: Thea Astley’s Cyclones of Revelation
Five. Threading the Eye of the Cyclone: Elizabeth Hunter’s Epiphany in Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm
Six. Earth Breathing: Susan Hawthorne’s Cyclone Within
Seven. The Apocalypse and Epiphany of Cyclone in the Land of Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria
Eight. The Word Becomes the Cyclone: Revelations of the Literary Storm
Appendix A: Fiction and Poetry Written and/or Set in Queensland Featuring Cyclones
Appendix B: Selected International Novels and Poetry Works Featuring Cyclonic Storms
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

The book is a significant achievement and a welcome contribution to the cultural understanding of tropical storms.”—Journal of Australian, Canadian, and Aotearoa New Zealand Studies

From the Publisher