Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film

by Roslynn D. Haynes

Overview

This is a book about the Australian desert and its central impact on Australian culture, from traditional Aboriginal art to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Starting with the Aboriginal understanding of the spiritual significance of the desert, it traces the attempts of the early colonists to conquer this alien space; the changing estimate of the inland explorers in fiction and art as heroes, failures, or psychological studies of obsession; the rediscovery of the desert in the twentieth century by travelers, artists, novelists, photographers and film makers; its interest for ecotourism and as a spiritual experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521571111
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/04/1999
Pages:	364
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 10.16(h) x 1.22(d)

Table of Contents

1. The land is a map: the Aboriginal relationship to the desert; 2. Forms, images, imaginings: European myths of the desert; 3. The 'hideous blank': imperatives for discovery; 4. Geography is never innocent: or, what the explorers thought they saw; 5. Perspectives on the desert: the art of exploration; 6. 'On the tracts of thirst and furnace': dead explorers and national identity; 7. Ripping yarns at the outpost of empire: the desert as adventure; 8. From 'dead heart' to 'red centre': travellers' tales and the lure of gold; 9. Seeing red: twentieth-century art of the desert; 10. A gothic desert: psychodrama in fiction and film; 11. Revisioning the explorers in twentieth-century art; 12. Transforming myths: the explorers in twentieth-century literature; 13. Seeing through biology: contemporary artists examine the desert; 14. The desert in the Age of Aquarius: environmentalism and renewal; 15. The art of reconciliation.

Editorial Reviews

"This brilliant book studies the Australian desert in that country's culture, past and present, from an extraordinarily comprehensive viewpoint that covers geology, ecology and history, as well as literature, film and painting (Aboriginal as well as European)....This work marks a change in Australian perspective, an illustrious achievement in the century that is closing. Most highly recommended for all collections at all levels." Choice

"Haynes, an Associate Professor in English at the University of New South Wales, demonstrates a dexterity and intellectual athleticism in Seeking the Centre that is sometimes lacking in other commentaries of the Australian postcolonial situation...Hayne's wide, yet incredibly specific, range of research and analyses provide more than ample evidence that the Australian desert as cultural symbol is stronger than it ever was." Yearbook of COmparative and General Literature

From the Publisher