Peter Carey is one of Australia's finest creative writers, much admired by both literary critics and a worldwide reading public. While academia has been quick to see his fictions as exemplars of postcolonial and postmodern writing strategies, his general readership has been captivated by his deadpan sense of humour, his quirky characters, the outlandish settings and the grotesqueries of his intricate plots. After three decades of prolific writing and multiple award-winning, Carey stands out in the world of Australian letters as designated heir to Patrick White.
Fabulating Beauty pays tribute to Carey's literary achievement. It brings together the voices of many of the most renowned Carey critics in twenty essays(sixteen commissioned especially for this volume), an interview with the author, as well as the most extensive bibliography of Carey criticism to date. The studies represent a wide range of current perspectives on the writer's fictions. Contributors focus on issues as diverse as the writer's biography; his use of architectural metaphors; his interrogation of narrative structures such as myths and cultural master-plots; intertextual strategies; concepts of sacredness and references to the Christian tradition; and his strategies of rewriting history. Amidst predictions of the imminent death of 'postist' theory, the essays all attest to the ongoing relevance of the critical parameters framed by postmodernism and postcolonialism.
Table of contents:
Paul KANE: Preface: Framing Peter Carey
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: The Writer and his Work
Andreas GAILE: The "contrarian streak": An Interview with Peter Carey
Karen LAMB: Bringing Australia Home: Peter Carey, the Booker, and the Repatriation of Australian Culture
Part II: Aspects and Overviews
Andreas GAILE: Towards an Alphabet of Australian Culture: Peter Carey's Mythistorical Novels
Christer LARSSON: Cross References: Allusions to Christian Tradition in Peter Carey's Fictions
Peter PIERCE: Kinds of Captivity in Peter Carey's Fiction
Theodore F. SHECKELS: The Difficulties of Translating Peter Carey's Postmodern Fiction into Popular Film
Nicholas BIRNS: "A Dazzled Eye": "Kristu-Du" and the Architecture of Tyranny
Part III: Perspectives on Individual Fictions
Cornelia SCHULZE: Peter Carey's Short Stories: Trapped in a Narrative Labyrinth
Nicholas JOSE: Bliss and Damnation: Peter Carey in Australia
Brian EDWARDS: Deceptive Constructions: The Art of Building in Peter Carey's Illywhacker
Lyn MCCREDDEN: Sacred Exchange: Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda
Ansgar NÜNNING: "The Empire had not been built by choirboys": The Revisionist Representation of Australian Colonial History in Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda
Bill ASHCROFT: Simulation, Resistance and Transformation: The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith
Pam MACINTYRE: Regarding The Big Bazoohley
Annegret MAACK: Peter Carey's Jack Maggs: An Aussie Story?
Barbara SCHMIDT-HABERKAMP: The Writing-Back Paradigm Revisited: Peter Carey, Jack Maggs, and Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Bruce WOODCOCK: Unsettling Illusions: Carey and Capital in Jack Maggs
Carolyn BLISS: "Lies and Silences": Cultural Masterplots and Existential Authenticity in Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang
Susan K. MARTIN: Dead White Male Heroes: True History of the Kelly Gang, and Ned Kelly in Australian Fictions
Anthony J. HASSALL: A Wildly Distorted Account? Peter Carey's 30 Days in Sydney
Robert MACFARLANE: Monstrosity, Fakery and Authorship in My Life as a Fake
Bibliography
Notes on the Contributors
Index
Fabulating Beauty pays tribute to Carey's literary achievement. It brings together the voices of many of the most renowned Carey critics in twenty essays(sixteen commissioned especially for this volume), an interview with the author, as well as the most extensive bibliography of Carey criticism to date. The studies represent a wide range of current perspectives on the writer's fictions. Contributors focus on issues as diverse as the writer's biography; his use of architectural metaphors; his interrogation of narrative structures such as myths and cultural master-plots; intertextual strategies; concepts of sacredness and references to the Christian tradition; and his strategies of rewriting history. Amidst predictions of the imminent death of 'postist' theory, the essays all attest to the ongoing relevance of the critical parameters framed by postmodernism and postcolonialism.
Table of contents:
Paul KANE: Preface: Framing Peter Carey
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: The Writer and his Work
Andreas GAILE: The "contrarian streak": An Interview with Peter Carey
Karen LAMB: Bringing Australia Home: Peter Carey, the Booker, and the Repatriation of Australian Culture
Part II: Aspects and Overviews
Andreas GAILE: Towards an Alphabet of Australian Culture: Peter Carey's Mythistorical Novels
Christer LARSSON: Cross References: Allusions to Christian Tradition in Peter Carey's Fictions
Peter PIERCE: Kinds of Captivity in Peter Carey's Fiction
Theodore F. SHECKELS: The Difficulties of Translating Peter Carey's Postmodern Fiction into Popular Film
Nicholas BIRNS: "A Dazzled Eye": "Kristu-Du" and the Architecture of Tyranny
Part III: Perspectives on Individual Fictions
Cornelia SCHULZE: Peter Carey's Short Stories: Trapped in a Narrative Labyrinth
Nicholas JOSE: Bliss and Damnation: Peter Carey in Australia
Brian EDWARDS: Deceptive Constructions: The Art of Building in Peter Carey's Illywhacker
Lyn MCCREDDEN: Sacred Exchange: Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda
Ansgar NÜNNING: "The Empire had not been built by choirboys": The Revisionist Representation of Australian Colonial History in Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda
Bill ASHCROFT: Simulation, Resistance and Transformation: The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith
Pam MACINTYRE: Regarding The Big Bazoohley
Annegret MAACK: Peter Carey's Jack Maggs: An Aussie Story?
Barbara SCHMIDT-HABERKAMP: The Writing-Back Paradigm Revisited: Peter Carey, Jack Maggs, and Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Bruce WOODCOCK: Unsettling Illusions: Carey and Capital in Jack Maggs
Carolyn BLISS: "Lies and Silences": Cultural Masterplots and Existential Authenticity in Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang
Susan K. MARTIN: Dead White Male Heroes: True History of the Kelly Gang, and Ned Kelly in Australian Fictions
Anthony J. HASSALL: A Wildly Distorted Account? Peter Carey's 30 Days in Sydney
Robert MACFARLANE: Monstrosity, Fakery and Authorship in My Life as a Fake
Bibliography
Notes on the Contributors
Index