eCite Digital Repository
Dying of Landscape: E.L. Grant Watson and the Australian Desert
Citation
Haynes, R, Dying of Landscape: E.L. Grant Watson and the Australian Desert, Australian Literary Studies, 19, (1) pp. 32-43. ISSN 0004-9697 (1999) [Refereed Article]
![]() | PDF Restricted - Request a copy 584Kb |
Copyright Statement
Copyright The Author 1999
DOI: doi:10.20314/als.b551ea493e
Abstract
The six, relatively neglected I Australian novels of Elliot Lovegood Grant
Watson, written between 1914 and 1935, present an intriguing and
complex reworking of their author's engagement with the Western
Australian desert. Equipped with a broad literary background, a close knowledge
of psychoanalysis and Jungian ideas, a deep interest in comparative religion and
the prior experience of travel in the Middle East, as well as a training in biology
and anthropology, Watson would seem the archetypal Renaissance man,
uniquely qualified to interpret his experiences within the European context of his
time. Yet, unlike his two later autobiographical explorations of this period, But
to What Purpose (1946) and Journey under the Southern Stars (1968), the
novels proposed such radical views about Aboriginal culture and European
settlement that, despite their anti-feminist stance, they could now pass as
respectably postcolonial and as prefigurings of the late twentieth-century
preoccupation with the spirit of place that in Australia is peculiarly associated
with desert areas.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
---|---|
Keywords: | Australia, history, literature, history, EL Grant Watson |
Research Division: | Language, Communication and Culture |
Research Group: | Communication and Media Studies |
Research Field: | Communication and Media Studies not elsewhere classified |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding Knowledge in Languages, Communication and Culture |
UTAS Author: | Haynes, R (Dr Roslynn Haynes) |
ID Code: | 121485 |
Year Published: | 1999 |
Web of Science® Times Cited: | 1 |
Deposited By: | Office of the School of Humanities |
Deposited On: | 2017-09-29 |
Last Modified: | 2017-11-20 |
Downloads: | 0 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page