School of Culture and Communication - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 3 of 3
-
ItemThe environment in English versions of the Grimms' and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale literature, 1823–1899( 2016)This dissertation explores the intersections between literature and environmental history in nineteenth-century English versions of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale literature. While the success of the Grimms’ and Andersen’s fairy tale literature in England can be attributed to the inclusion of Christian principles, the privileging of individualism, the omission of licentious content and the focalisation of child protagonists, this dissertation argues that the tales were also valued for presenting an environmental ethos. English versions of the Grimms’ and Andersen’s fairy tales relayed anthropocentric ideas about nature which competed with a developing sense of environmentalism during a period of rapid environmental change. While these tales idealised the tremendous possibilities offered by the environment, nature is not prioritised above human interest; rather, these versions effectively highlight humanity’s destructive disposition by disempowering female and animal characters. By focusing on depictions of nature during a century of environmental devastation, this thesis contributes to our understanding of humanity’s relationship with the natural world as relayed in literary texts.
-
ItemFauna Fiction: 'Interspecies Communication in Contemporary Literature' and 'The Animals in That Country'( 2017)Instances of interspecies communication and miscommunication occur in almost every interaction humans have with other animals. Nonetheless, discussions of nonhuman animals as communicative subjects are often relegated to interspecies language experiments and children’s fiction. This thesis makes an original contribution by exploring representations of interspecies communication in contemporary adult fiction, which I call ‘fauna fiction’. In the critical component I analyse in some detail what is occurring in novelistic accounts of human-nonhuman animal encounters. I focus on six contemporary fauna fictions: The Conversations of Cow (1985) by Suniti Namjoshi, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (2011) by Benjamin Hale, Wish (1995) by Peter Goldsworthy, A Beautiful Truth (2013) by Colin McAdam, Bear (1976) by Marian Engel and Dog Boy (2009) by Eva Hornung. In these texts, the meeting point of attempted contact between species is framed theoretically by three key concepts: the ‘speaking meat’ (as conceptualised by ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood), the ‘species boundary’, and ‘language primacy’. I argue that what I call ‘agency-centred models’ of literary animal studies – in which nonhuman animals are considered as responding beings – provide a relevant theoretical base from which to study interspecies communication in fauna fiction. In order to draw out these ideas, I ask: how we might read these novels as disruptive speculations upon a perceived species divide between human and nonhuman animals? I argue that fauna fiction contains subversive sexual and violent subtexts of nonhuman animal resistance. Through this lens, the nonhuman animal protagonist is no longer an allegory or stand-in for human meaning in fiction, but a destabilising, transgressive and resistant figure. The creative component consists of a novel extract, The Animals in That Country. The novel is an apocalyptic literary fiction that provides new insights by exploring communicative human-nonhuman animal relationships. The story follows Jean, a fifty-one-year-old Australian zoo guide, into a world where humans can understand other animals. Through shared communication the human characters in this novel are able to put words to their complex relationships with other animals. They are also confronted with their own animality, a reality for which the language barrier usually provides a convenient shield. Conversations between species forge new connections. The novel also engages with issues of intersubjectivity, power and violence, resulting in dystopian outcomes. As the narrative develops, a dingo character called Sue becomes increasingly important to Jean, and eventually takes charge of Jean’s life. Through this process, dingo speech is prioritised. In The Animals in That Country, the overwhelming responsibility that comes with sudden shared communication with other creatures is sometimes offset by the thrill of insight into previously incomprehensible minds.
-
ItemTowards an ecocritical theatre: staging the Anthropo(s)cene( 2017)The current epoch of a human-induced interval in geological history has been called the Anthropocene Age. This has been a focus of concern that has expanded from a scientific to a broadly cultural inquiry. This period of profound human impact on the Earth’s ecosystems poses a paradigm shift in thinking about ideas of nature, ecology, and Homo sapiens itself, calling for new modes of address and representation. This thesis aims to make a timely intervention into the humanist bias of theatre by devising conceptual and aesthetic principles that relate to the Anthropocene. In the theatre, this geological, temporal, and spatial frame is shifting the focus from the human to the planetary scope, and my thesis examines how theatre is responding to this new reality by turning abstract ideas into “material expressions.” This project theorises the theatre’s role as a transformative force in dislocating dominant forms of anthropocentrism and recalibrating the problems of scale and agency born of current ecological challenges. Looking at the work of Caryl Churchill, Stephen Sewell, Andrew Bovell, EM Lewis, and Chantal Bilodeau through the lens of Anthropocene-oriented ecocriticism, this thesis argues that ecocriticism and environmental perspectives are needed in theatre studies to sharpen the focus on the revolutions the Anthropocene causes in humanity’s condition. In a detailed analysis of key works by these playwrights in relation to global and material trends of ecocriticism, the thesis demonstrates a collection of innovative responses to representational shifts towards human and nonhuman intra-relationships, communicating the discomforting truth of hyperobjects such as the change of climate, the presence of toxic pollution, the effects of extinction, and the anxiety of sustainability. Ecological thinking applied to theatre foregrounds the “agential force” of nonhuman animals and objects, calling for a rethinking of the human subject as a “geological actor.” Sketching a trajectory from plays that raise awareness of environmental issues to plays that directly undertake posthumanist ecological perspectives, this thesis shows how theatre and performance anticipates and stages the Anthropocene. This study demonstrates not just that the Anthropocene provides a challenge to the theatrical world but that theatre provides significant modes of inquiring into and locating it.