Volume 4 : Issue 1 & 2 January to June (2017)

READING THE COUNTRY SPACE: NATURE AND UNITY IN MALOUF’S AN IMAGINARY LIFE AND WINTON’S SHALLOWS

Depiction of Australian landscape and country space vis-a-vis human body has been explored repeatedly by contemporary Australian novelists. Different perceptions about land delve from a state of anonymity to settlement and finally possession. Post-colonial literatures open possibilities to represent the transformations from pre-colonial, colonial to post-colonial. The present paper is an attempt to locate the stages in such a construction, studying it in a purely post-colonial context through the critical debates regarding the contrasting notions of wilderness and the civilized; savage and the tamed; and the country and the city through a close reading of David Malouf’s novels An Imaginary Life and Tim Winton’s Shallows.

Landscape, body, identity consciousness

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