Brayshaw, MegUnknown
Springer International Publishing (Cham, Switzerland , 2021) (eng) English9783030644260Literary urban studies1st ed.NEW SOUTH WALES--SYDNEY; UnknownThis book examines literary representations of Sydney and its waterway in the context of Australian modernism and modernity in the interwar period. Then as now, Sydney Harbour is both an ecological wonder and ladened with economic, cultural, historical and aesthetic significance for the city by its shores. In Australia’s earliest canon of urban fiction, writers including Christina Stead, Dymphna Cusack, Eleanor Dark, Kylie Tennant and M. Barnard Eldershaw explore the myth and the reality of the city ‘built on water’. Mapping Sydney via its watery and littoral places, these writers trace impacts of empire, commercial capitalism, global trade and technology on the city, while drawing on estuarine logics of flow and blockage, circulation and sedimentation to innovate modes of writing temporally, geographically and aesthetically specific to Sydney’s provincial modernity. Contributing to the growing field of oceanic or aqueous studies, Sydney, its Waterway and Australian Modernism shows the capacity of water and human-water relations to make both generative and disruptive contributions to urban topography and narrative topology.
Physical dimension
1 online resource (xi, 217 p.)Unknownill.
Summary / review / table of contents
1. Introduction: Writing a city built on water --
2. The origins of Australian urban modernity: Christina Steads Seven Poor Men of Sydney (1934) --
3. Science, everyday experience and modern urban women: Dymphna Cusacks Jungfrau (1936) --
4. Ecology, urban ethics and the Harbour: Eleanor Darks Waterway (1938) --
5. Plans, porosity and the possibilities of urban narrative: Kylie Tennants Foveaux (1939) --
6. The end of the city: M. Barnard Eldershaws Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1947; 1983) --
7. Conclusion: Sydney then and now.