Continental Theory in the Wake of Cognitive Literary Studies. In an era that is plainly 'post-theoretical', the recent pioneering attempts to bridge the gap between literary studies and the cognitive neurosciences have far-reaching consequences for the study of English literature. This project will address those consequences by implementing a comparative critical study of continental theory and cognitive poetics, and through this comparison enlarge and refine urgent debates about the future of t ....Continental Theory in the Wake of Cognitive Literary Studies. In an era that is plainly 'post-theoretical', the recent pioneering attempts to bridge the gap between literary studies and the cognitive neurosciences have far-reaching consequences for the study of English literature. This project will address those consequences by implementing a comparative critical study of continental theory and cognitive poetics, and through this comparison enlarge and refine urgent debates about the future of the humanities and the kinds of teaching practices carried out therein. The project will therefore provide important groundwork for future research carried out at the frontier of literature, critical theory and cognitive science.Read moreRead less
The Language of Old Norse Poetry, an important intellectual achievement of the Western Middle Ages. Old Norse poetry, produced from the Viking Age until the end of the Middle Ages, is one of the most important achievements in European literature. Thematically, it ranges from praise of Viking kings to Christian devotion; in metre and style it is extremely elaborate. It has applied value to a range of disciplines, including history, archaeology, linguistics and religious studies. This project will ....The Language of Old Norse Poetry, an important intellectual achievement of the Western Middle Ages. Old Norse poetry, produced from the Viking Age until the end of the Middle Ages, is one of the most important achievements in European literature. Thematically, it ranges from praise of Viking kings to Christian devotion; in metre and style it is extremely elaborate. It has applied value to a range of disciplines, including history, archaeology, linguistics and religious studies. This project will make Norse poetic language more accessible to scholars and the general public by providing new resources in the English language for its understanding, superseding previous studies because of the use of fully revised primary data.Read moreRead less
Reverse Diaspora: Australian Expatriate Writers in Britain since the 1830s. The changing relations between Australia and Britain are explored in this project through writers of literature and drama. Reverse Diaspora explores the aspirations, problems and achievements of eighty expatriate Australians who have chosen to live and work in Britain since the early nineteenth century. From one point of view they represent a 'brain drain'; from another they are exporters of Australian ideas, experience ....Reverse Diaspora: Australian Expatriate Writers in Britain since the 1830s. The changing relations between Australia and Britain are explored in this project through writers of literature and drama. Reverse Diaspora explores the aspirations, problems and achievements of eighty expatriate Australians who have chosen to live and work in Britain since the early nineteenth century. From one point of view they represent a 'brain drain'; from another they are exporters of Australian ideas, experience and talent. This study will increase knowledge and understanding of the lives, creative achievements and public impact of Australians abroad. It will enhance Australians' capacity to interpret their national culture in their region and the world.Read moreRead less
Linguistic individuation in the plays of Shakespeare and his peers, 1576-1599. The question of how differently each speaker or writer uses language is important in everything from plagiarism to the definition of artistic genius. The project makes Shakespearean drama before 1600 a definitive test case of this wider problem of individuality in language. Australians are inheritors of the Western tradition of individual self-determination and self-expression; the project will help clarify one of the ....Linguistic individuation in the plays of Shakespeare and his peers, 1576-1599. The question of how differently each speaker or writer uses language is important in everything from plagiarism to the definition of artistic genius. The project makes Shakespearean drama before 1600 a definitive test case of this wider problem of individuality in language. Australians are inheritors of the Western tradition of individual self-determination and self-expression; the project will help clarify one of the main assumptions behind this tradition. Australia is also an inheritor of the English-language culture of which Shakespeare is a key element, and the project will enrich the understanding of this culture through new light on his beginnings.Read moreRead less
American Literary Celebrity and Contemporary Identity. In post-war America, the writers James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams were all assumed to be homosexual in the days before this became relatively "safe," yet they all attained celebrity status. This project aims to examine the effect that the presence of these literary celebrities had on the formation of contemporary gay identity. In doing so, the project aims to demonstrate the inadequacy of the analytic categorie ....American Literary Celebrity and Contemporary Identity. In post-war America, the writers James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams were all assumed to be homosexual in the days before this became relatively "safe," yet they all attained celebrity status. This project aims to examine the effect that the presence of these literary celebrities had on the formation of contemporary gay identity. In doing so, the project aims to demonstrate the inadequacy of the analytic categories of the open secret and the closet, conventionally used in sexuality studies to explain gay identity in the post-war years before gay liberation. The project endeavours to contribute to our understanding of two vital and interrelated aspects of contemporary society: celebrity culture and gay identity.Read moreRead less
J. M. Coetzee and Making Sense in LIterature. Focusing on the work of Nobel Prize winning South African-Australian novelist J. M. Coetzee, this project examines how Coetzee’s fiction develops techniques that generate or produce meaning about the world and involves levels of ‘translatability’ that allow it to maintain relevance across cultures. A detailed analysis that focuses on how Coetzee makes us question the nature of meaning itself has not yet been undertaken, even though this is of central ....J. M. Coetzee and Making Sense in LIterature. Focusing on the work of Nobel Prize winning South African-Australian novelist J. M. Coetzee, this project examines how Coetzee’s fiction develops techniques that generate or produce meaning about the world and involves levels of ‘translatability’ that allow it to maintain relevance across cultures. A detailed analysis that focuses on how Coetzee makes us question the nature of meaning itself has not yet been undertaken, even though this is of central importance to his work.Read moreRead less
Journalism on the Move: The Special Correspondent and Victorian Print Culture. This project brings the 'special correspondent' into critical focus as an important journalistic role in Victorian print culture and thereby recovers a significant part of Australia's cultural inheritance. Two of the 'specials' who form a focus for my study visited Australia and wrote about it; and the nineteenth-century debates that surrounded their highly popular, descriptive style of journalism continue today in co ....Journalism on the Move: The Special Correspondent and Victorian Print Culture. This project brings the 'special correspondent' into critical focus as an important journalistic role in Victorian print culture and thereby recovers a significant part of Australia's cultural inheritance. Two of the 'specials' who form a focus for my study visited Australia and wrote about it; and the nineteenth-century debates that surrounded their highly popular, descriptive style of journalism continue today in controversies surrounding the relationship between fact and fiction in Australian print culture. My project will bring these hitherto neglected connections to light and strengthen Australia's standing within the expanding international field of research in Victorian periodicals and newspapers.Read moreRead less
Shakespeare, the Early Modern Theatre and Computational Stylistics. The investigators aim to answer some central questions in Shakespearean drama through a collaborative study combining computational and traditional methods. They will explore areas not hitherto studied with computational means, such as the nature of collaboration in the drama writing of the period, and intertextual relations between source material and plays, as well as long-standing questions in authorship and dating. Statistic ....Shakespeare, the Early Modern Theatre and Computational Stylistics. The investigators aim to answer some central questions in Shakespearean drama through a collaborative study combining computational and traditional methods. They will explore areas not hitherto studied with computational means, such as the nature of collaboration in the drama writing of the period, and intertextual relations between source material and plays, as well as long-standing questions in authorship and dating. Statistical and corpus-based results will be aligned with scholarly-critical evidence to provide findings of exceptional authority, and to establish a new paradigm for humanities research. The main outcome will be a jointly authored book.Read moreRead less
Early modern women and the poetry of complaint, 1540-1660. This project aims to discover how early modern women used the widespread, powerful and diverse mode of complaint to voice expressions of protest and loss during the English Renaissance. The project will highlight women’s roles as writers, patrons and textual producers and consumers of the mode of complaint. The project expects to uncover how the imagined voices of the disempowered shaped the literary and political cultures of early moder ....Early modern women and the poetry of complaint, 1540-1660. This project aims to discover how early modern women used the widespread, powerful and diverse mode of complaint to voice expressions of protest and loss during the English Renaissance. The project will highlight women’s roles as writers, patrons and textual producers and consumers of the mode of complaint. The project expects to uncover how the imagined voices of the disempowered shaped the literary and political cultures of early modern England. Reconceptualising a mode in Renaissance literature will benefit Australia's standing at the forefront of research in early modern studies.Read moreRead less
New Electronic Archives for Australian Literature. Information capacity in Australian literary studies has been dramatically expanded by national investment in electronic archives, while trends in the discipline increasingly demand empirical support for claims about literary history and literary value. At the same time, research about Australian literature remains primarily theoretical, insufficiently informed by newly available data. This project aims to further enrich the new data sets, and to ....New Electronic Archives for Australian Literature. Information capacity in Australian literary studies has been dramatically expanded by national investment in electronic archives, while trends in the discipline increasingly demand empirical support for claims about literary history and literary value. At the same time, research about Australian literature remains primarily theoretical, insufficiently informed by newly available data. This project aims to further enrich the new data sets, and to use them in an innovative return to the classical issues in Australian literary criticism and history. It will provide demonstration applications of data in new electronic archives.Read moreRead less