Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Doctoral Thesis (11)
- Article (1)
- Book (1)
- Master's Thesis (1)
- Other (1)
Language
- English (15) (remove)
Keywords
- Kanada (3)
- Literatur (3)
- 20th Century (2)
- Englisch (2)
- Identität (2)
- Lyrik (2)
- Zuhause (2)
- 20. Jh. (1)
- Aborigines (1)
- African American Literature (1)
Institute
- Anglistik (15) (remove)
Since the end of the British Empire, which had provided white Australians with points of view, attitudes and stereotypes of the world - including perceptions of their own role in it -, rediscovering an international identity has been an Australian quest. Many turned to European roots; others to the Aboriginal landscape; Blanche d"Alpuget and Christopher J. Koch are two who have ventured into Asia for the culturally and spiritually regenerative materials necessary to redefine Australia in the post-colonial world. They have taken Eastern concepts of "self", and "soul" and forged them with the Australian obsession of fear and desire of contact with the "other" in a looking-glass of hybrid, Austral-Asian myth to reveal the true soul of Australian identity. Along with a brief historical and literary background to the triangular relationship between white Australia, Asia, and the West, this study- goal is to identify some of the Southeast Asian symbols, myths and literary structures which Koch and d"Alpuget integrate into the Western tradition. Central elements include: dichotomies as of personality, righteousness, and virtue; the "Otherworld", where one may approach enlightenment, but at the risk of falling into self-delusion; archetypes of the Hindu divine feminine; Eastern roots of Koch- themes of the "double man"; concepts of the forces of "light" and "dark"; the semiotics of time and meaning; and the central Eastern metaphor of the mirror by which Australia creates interdependent images of itself and of Asia.