[csaa-forum] RESEARCH SEMINAR 25 AUGUST: ANDREW MILNER on FROM THE BEACH TO THE SEA: TWO PARADIGMATIC AUSTRALIAN DYSTOPIAS

[Andrew Milner]

CENTRE FOR COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND CULTURAL STUDIES
Monash University, Melbourne

RESEARCH SEMINAR

Wednesday 25 August, 3.00 to 4.30 pm, Room W710, Menzies Building
(Building 11), Clayton Campus

FROM THE BEACH TO THE SEA: TWO PARADIGMATIC AUSTRALIAN DYSTOPIAS

Andrew Milner

Andrew Milner is Professor in the Centre. His publications include
John Milton and the English Revolution (1981), Cultural Materialism
(1993), Class (1999), Re-Imagining Cultural Studies (2002),
Contemporary Cultural Theory (2002), Literature, Culture and Society
(2005) and Tenses of Imagination: Raymond Williams on Utopia, Dystopia
and Science Fiction (2010).

Abstract

In literary studies, the canonical artwork is conventionally
understood as paradigmatic, the non-canonical work - of popular
fiction, for example - as mere case-study. This paper will take the
two most famous examples of Australian dystopian science fiction,
Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957) and George Turner’s The Sea and
Summer (1987), and ask whether either or both might be considered in
some sense paradigmatic, despite their apparently non-canonical
status. On The Beach has been continuously in print since first
publication, has been adapted for cinema (1959), television (2000) and
radio (2008), and translated into most European languages (in 1978
Shute was the most translated of all Australian authors). In short, it
was a popular success. The Sea and Summer, by contrast, has long been
out of print and has inspired no subsequent adaptations. It did,
however, win the 1988 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the 1988 British
Arthur C. Clarke Award and was also shortlisted for the 1988 American
Nebula Award. In short, it was a (temporary) critical success. The
paper will argue for a sociological understanding of the culturally
paradigmatic, which will be loosely based on Pierre Bourdieu’s account
of the genesis and structure of the literary and cultural field.

ALL WELCOME

For further details contact Professor Andrew Benjamin
<Andrew.Benjamin at monash.edu>

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Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
School of English, Communications and Performance Studies
Monash University
Melbourne
Victoria 3800
AUSTRALIA

Phone: (61) (3)  9905 2095
Fax: (61) (3) 9905 5593
Email: arts-clcs at monash.edu
Homepage:
http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/clcs/research/