Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis This subject examines the representation of urban life in twentieth-century Australian literature. Redirecting Australian cultural debate away from its traditional emphasis on `the bush', the subject investigates how the fictionalised city has acted as a focus for cultural redefinition and as a catalyst for literary innovation. The selected texts represent a range of modes used to construct the city: popular fiction, social realism, autobiography, social satire, the urban picaresque and the urban dystopia, and recent postmodernist fiction. Specific areas of study include the literary `cartography' of cities in the creation of a spatial and social environment, the use of architectural motifs, the interplay of urban landscape and narrative form, regionalism and expatriation, sociological perspectives and political imperatives in fictionalising the city, and varying responses to inner-urban and suburban environments.
Assessment Written (3000 words): 50% + Test (1 hour): 25% + Seminar participation/seminar paper (1500 words): 25%