Brigid Rooney
Autore di Literary Activists: Writer-Intellectuals and Australian Public Life
Sull'Autore
Brigid Rooney teaches Australian literature in the Department of English at the University of Sydney, Australia. The author of Literary Activists: Writer-Intellectuals and Australian Public Life (2009), Rooney has published her research on contemporary Australian writers in a wide range of mostra altro scholarly and literary journals. Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture publishes quality, innovative research that advances contemporary scholarship on Australian literature conceived historically, thematically and/or conceptually. mostra meno
Fonte dell'immagine: University of Sydney
Opere di Brigid Rooney
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- female
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- #739,559
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- 3.0
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- 5
However, it's the ideas in the Introduction that interest me most. Brigid Rooney surveys the literary landscape from the 1940s to the present (i.e. the early 2000s at her time of writing) and so her primary interest is in the activism of Judith Wright, Patrick White, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Les Murray, David Malouf , Helen Garner and Tim Winton. Of these only the last three are still living: Malouf is in his 80s, and Garner is not far behind; only Winton is younger than I am. However, I am more interested in the writer-activists that spring to mind from my recent reading: Indigenous writers exposing Australia's Black history such as Alexis Wright, Marie Munkara, and Anita Heiss; authors tackling the issue of climate change such as Alice Robinson, Jane Rawson and Lucy Treloar; and those such as Meg Mundell and Rohan Wilson inviting readers to think about refugees. There are others who tackle a wide range of contemporary issues: Rodney Hall, David Ireland, Elliot Perlman, Wayne Macauley, Eleni Hale and John Tesearch, to name but a few.
However, the issues Rooney discusses in the introduction remain valid. She begins by recounting a 2003 talk by David Marr, in which he noted that in the 1970s political parties anxiously sought the endorsement of the nation's leading artists. However, speaking in 2003, he said, [and things have only got worse since], artists and writers have become political liabilities, not assets, and politicians are quick to distance themselves from the taint of arts elitism. Marr invoked Patrick White to make his audience mindful of the urgent necessity of sustaining the relevance, value and public authority of an Australian literary culture.
But who was Marr's audience? Rooney explains:
While aware that this audience was largely from an inner city demographic and thus vulnerable to charges of elitism, and sympathetic to the changed economic landscape that impacts on young people today, Rooney nails it IMO when she writes:
If anything, the prestige of the literary has faded even further since Rooney wrote this book and noted that contemporary Australian writers have been blamed for shying away from political engagement, from the big national issues of the day.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/12/16/literary-activists-writer-intellectuals-and-...… (altro)