Opening The Book: New Essays On New Zealand Writing
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Over the last three decades New Zealand literature has changed radically as New Zealand has become more diverse and more independent of its colonial origins. In place of a small literary culture—nationalist, realist, Pakeha and masculine in outlook—we now find a variety of styles, kinds, voices. In response to these changes, writing about New Zealand literature has also changed. Since the mid 1980s, criticism in New Zealand has sought to come to terms with feminism, culture studies, postmodernism, post-colonialism indigenous writing. This book collects new essays by writers and critics who have taken part in this process of assimilation and debate. The aim is not to announce a new orthodoxy or to impose some imported critical methodology on local writing. Rather the book shows how some well-known New Zealand authors—Mansfield, Sargeson, Hyde, Frame—can be read and reinterpreted from a number of critical perspectives and how different types of writing can be freshly reconsidered. The essays are lively, various, challenging. They re-examine New Zealand's past, question long-held assumptions, analyze the contemporary scene, and indicate new directions.
Acknowledgements7Introduction91'The Sod Under My Feet': Katherine Mansfield312The Childish Empire and the Empire of Children: Colonial and Alternative Dominions in Robin Hyde's Check to Your King and Wednesday's Children493Frank at Last684Sacrifice and Signification in the Poetry of Allen Curnow835James K. Baxter and the Dialect of the Tribe1056Scandalously In-Different? Janet Frame, Postmodernism and Gender1237Keri Hulme and 'Love's Wounded Beings'1408The Old Man's Example: Manhire in the Seventies1629Patricia Grace and Complete Communication18810'Bliss', and Why Ignorance Won't Do: The Use of Criticism and Theory in Current Reading Practices21111'History' in the New Zealand Novel and Film Today23212Holding the Line: Contested Contexts in Recent Verse24913Opening the Archive: Robin Hyde, Eileen Duggan and the Persistence of Record26614Re-Playing and Dis-Playing the Nation: New Zealand Drama29415A Fantastic Tale307Bibliography317Contributors329Index332
