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Island home: returning to Tasmania in Peter Conrad’s Down Home (1988) and Tim Bowden’s The Devil in Tim (2005)
Citation
Clarke, R, Island home: returning to Tasmania in Peter Conrad's Down Home (1988) and Tim Bowden's The Devil in Tim (2005), Studies in Travel Writing, 20, (1) pp. 100-115. ISSN 1364-5145 (2016) [Refereed Article]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2016 Taylor & Francis
DOI: doi:10.1080/13645145.2015.1134827
Abstract
Tasmania is often spoken of domestically as a "problem". Indeed, talk of "the problem of
Tasmania" circulates through intellectual and governmental as much as everyday discourse.
For writers like Peter Conrad and Tim Bowden – expatriate Tasmanians who write of their
"return" to the island – the discourse on the problem of Tasmania is particularly
challenging. As returnees, the narrators of Conrad’s Down Home (1988) and Bowden’s The
Devil in Tim (2005) engage in reflections on identity, alterity and history in ways that
exploit and resist the stereotypes, tropes and narratives that have traditionally underpinned
discussion of the Tasmanian problem. This essay argues that while the texts can be read as
complicit with the ideology that sustains the idea of that problem, in their turn to encounters
with "ordinary" Tasmania they present alternative visions of the state that question the
ideologies that position the island as limited, backward and perpetually beset by intransigent
challenges.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | Tim Bowden; Peter Conrad; grey nomads; return narratives; tourism; “the Tasmanian problem; ordinariness |
Research Division: | Language, Communication and Culture |
Research Group: | Literary studies |
Research Field: | Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) |
Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
Objective Group: | Communication |
Objective Field: | Literature |
UTAS Author: | Clarke, R (Dr Robert Clarke) |
ID Code: | 105629 |
Year Published: | 2016 |
Deposited By: | School of Humanities |
Deposited On: | 2016-01-11 |
Last Modified: | 2017-11-24 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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