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2 - War, Crisis, and Identity in Australian Poetry

from Part I - Change and Renewal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2024

By
Dan Disney
Edited by
Ann Vickery
Ann Vickery
Affiliation:
Deakin University, Victoria
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Summary

This chapter contextualises Australia’s involvement in major conflicts in light of the European invasion of Australia and the settler-colonial imaginary. It considers how poetry shaped the ANZAC myth extended settler masculinities and portrayed the soldier as both ordinary and extraordinary. The chapter considers divergent trajectories in World War II poetry, including the work of Kenneth Slessor, J. S. Manifold, James McAuley, and Douglas Stewart. It also considers responses to the Vietnam War, such as Bruce Dawe’s “Homecoming.” While the chapter investigates the dismantling of the soldier myth in late twentieth-century poetry, it also notes colonial presumptions persisting in works like Les Murray’s “Visiting Anzac in the Year of Metrification.” It then outlines the emergence of Indigenous counter-narratives to the violence of settler colonialism.

Keywords

warANZAC mythologynational identitysettler-colonial violence
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry , pp. 38 - 53
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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