A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature

This international collection of eleven original essays on Australian Aboriginal literature provides a comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes the Aboriginal canon for scholars, researchers, students, and general readers.

This international collection of eleven original essays on Australian Aboriginal literature provides a comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes the Aboriginal canon for scholars, researchers, students, and general readers.



Australian Aboriginal literature, once relegated to the margins of Australian literary studies, now receives both national and international attention. Not only has the number of published texts by contemporary Australian Aboriginals risen sharply, but scholars and publishers have also recently begun recovering earlier published and unpublished Indigenous works. Writing by Australian Aboriginals is making a decisive impression in fiction, autobiography, biography, poetry, film, drama, and music, and has recently been anthologized in Oceania and North America.
Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes the Aboriginal canon for scholars, researchers, students, and general readers. This international collection of eleven original essays fills this gap by discussing crucial aspects of Australian Aboriginal literature and tracing the development of Aboriginalliteracy from the oral tradition up until today, contextualizing the work of Aboriginal artists and writers and exploring aspects of Aboriginal life writing such as obstacles toward publishing, questions of editorial control (orthe lack thereof), intergenerational and interracial collaborations combining oral history and life writing, and the pros and cons of translation into European languages.

Contributors: Katrin Althans, Maryrose Casey, Danica Cerce, Stuart Cooke, Paula Anca Farca, Michael R. Griffiths, Oliver Haag, Martina Horakova, Jennifer Jones, Nicholas Jose, Andrew King, Jeanine Leane, Theodore F. Sheckels, Belinda Wheeler.

Belinda Wheeler is Associate Professor of English at Claflin University, Orangeburg, SC.

Foreword - Nichola Jose
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Emerging Canon - Belinda Wheeler
Chronology
Indigenous Life Writing: Rethinking Poetics and Practice - Michael R. Griffiths
Australian Aboriginal Life Writers and Their Editors: Cross-Cultural Collaboration, Authorial Intention, and the Impact of Editorial Choices - Jennifer Jones
Contemporary Life Writing: Inscribing Double Voice in Intergenerational Collaborative Life-Writing Projects - Martina Horakova
European Translations of Australian Aboriginal Texts - Danica Cerce and Oliver Haag
Tracing a Trajectory from Songpoetry to Contemporary Aboriginal Poetry - Stuart Cooke
Rites/Rights/Writes of Passage: Identity Construction in Australian Aboriginal Young Adult Fiction - Jeanine Leane
Humor in Contemporary Aboriginal Adult Fiction - Paula Anca Farca
White Shadows: The Gothic Tradition in Australian Aboriginal Literature - Katrin Althans
Bold, Black, and Brilliant: Aboriginal Australian Drama - Maryrose Casey
The "Stolen Generations" in Feature Film: The Approach of Aboriginal Director Rachel Perkins and Others - Theodore F. Scheckels
A History of Popular Indigenous Music - Andrew King
Notes on the Contributors
Note on the Cover Artist
Index