Australian Gothic Fiction by Jennifer Fan https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_ Made to understand the context of 'The Dressmaker' (2015), by Jocelyn Moorhouse en-us 2018-12-14 16:59:37 UTC 2024-11-05 14:14:20 UTC hello@padlet.com The Anthology of Colonial Australian Gothic Fiction fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323040774 This news article, though more than a decade old, points out that Australian Gothic fiction is gothic in the way that Australia is a country with a vast emptiness, rather than one filled with ancient castles. As author Lorien Kaye describes it, “[Australia’s] vast openness can become paradoxically claustrophobic.” This article also focuses on how Gothic fiction was a genre with widely known authors from around the mid-1800s to mid-1900s; most of the books of the genre were published in the 1890s. Additionally, Kaye writes about how colonial life in Australia was targeted through different authors and their works, such as William Astley’s “compelling” The Pegging-Out of Overseer Franke. This article is short and succinct - it would be useful for one looking for a brief overview of Australian Gothic fiction and the difference it has compared to other gothic works.]]> 2019-01-22 15:35:05 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323040774 Australian Gothic Fiction fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323042983 This podcast features three guests: Professor Gerry Turcotte, Professor Ken Gelder and Dr Rachel Weaver. The presenter, Ramona Koval, prompts Prof. Turcotte and Prof. Gelder to delve into the history of colonial Australian Gothic; how the Gothic from Canada and the UK travelled to Australia and the “convict past” of the genre. She then moves onto how several modern works also include literary devices from Gothic fiction, allowing the three literature and culture experts to expand on it. After concentrating on certain authors and their works, they focus the light and dark aspects of Gothic fiction in general, such as the humour and history. Koval and her guests “delve into the brooding and melancholic side of Australian literature”, how the bush and the city are featured in different works and how gothic features can be seen in the two. For anyone who loves podcasts dense with information and history, this recording offers a tonne in a half-hour session. This is useful for learning how Australian Gothic came to be and how Australia’s outback and cities are brimming with hidden gothic features.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/bookshow/australian-gothic-fiction/3400242
]]> 2019-01-22 15:37:52 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323042983 Wide Open Fear: Australian Horror and Gothic Fiction fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323044574 “There’s simply something about the vastness of this land and the many weird, wild and dangerous creatures that populate it that lends itself to terrifying tales.” - Tehani Wessely

This is just one of the many quotes used in this article to provide readers with a melancholic and depressing outlook on Australia’s landscape and literature. For those who are looking to explore the Gothic side of Australia in depth with hard evidence, this website is just the place. Lisa L. Hannett weaves together different works from various authors, along with descriptive interpretations, to form a column that explains Australian Horror and Gothic fiction. She focuses on “the vastness of this land” that acts as the background to dark short stories. Hannett goes on to explain that bushfires and droughts are used as a metaphor of a bleak future by several authors; the dangers of the desert add “horrific [tones]” to pieces and the sunrise on the desert is compared to the “leaking [of hell]”. She is not afraid to dive straight into the centre of Australian Gothic and the nature of Australia’s landscape that provide the foundations of this literacy style.
]]> 2019-01-22 15:39:55 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323044574 Australian Gothic theatre fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323046953 2019-01-22 15:43:25 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323046953 fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323049368 2019-01-22 15:46:31 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323049368 Australian Gothic landscape example fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323050024 2019-01-22 15:47:23 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323050024 The Monster Within: Australian Gothic emphasises the terror of the familiar fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323166766 Written by Lisa Thatcher, this article is produced by The Essential, an Australian company that presents an “Australian perspective” on modern and classic cinema and music from both Australia and around the world; it is bound to provide its readers with an in-depth explanation of the nature of Australian Gothic films and novels. This article discusses what separates Australian Gothic from the rest of the world - the monster within. The “white Australian psyche”, how social forces impact it and the journey the psyche takes the “wandering individual lost in a decaying world” are exemplified through Australian Gothic, rather than the physical monsters, such as Frankenstein and Dracula. Thatcher expands on the works of “the most obvious originator of the Australian Gothic” - Peter Weir - and how his well-known films, such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Cars That Ate Paris, have become staples in the definition of Australian Gothic. The Night, The Prowler, produced by Jim Sharman, is another Australian Gothic novel-made-film that she unpacks. She draws the conclusion that the “strain between the ugly and the ordinary” is unique to Australian Gothic films and that they have a way “of building the remarkable on the unremarkable”. This article is particularly helping in learning about the history and origins of Australian Gothic fiction and the “monster within”.]]> 2019-01-22 18:55:03 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323166766 Peter Weir's first work: The Cars That Ate Paris fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323170449 2019-01-22 19:01:44 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323170449 Australian Gothic: Film Weirdness from Down Under fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323183348 Including summaries of Wolf Creek, Dead End Drive In and Wake in Fright, this article is written as an expansion on another article published by the Sydney Morning Herald. Author James Barrett writes about the sense of Australia’s landscape as a major theme in the creative arts. He explains that the “fragile European eye” views Australia as a horrifying stretch of wild emptiness, a hotspot of fear and disappointment. He is succinct in his introduction, writing, “Getting lost, disappearing, being trapped or escaping or going mad in the outback are staple themes in Australian Gothic.” This article is useful for someone wanting an insight on some of the most classic Australian Gothic films, especially if they have a lot of time; Barrett has included trailers of movies, and sometimes even the full movie themselves, along with the summaries of such films.

]]> 2019-01-22 19:24:29 UTC https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323183348 Australian Gothic on the Borderline of Old and New fanj4 https://padlet.com/fanj4/the_dressmaker_context_/wish/323203156 This dense and detailed article is useful for information on the unique characteristics that make up Australian Gothic fiction; it talks about what makes Australian Gothic so “uniquely, originally Australian” and how various authors have achieved this. Meant for a mature reader, the language of the article implies that the Gothic fiction of Australian literature comes from a complicated background, one never seen before. According to the article, Australia was “a land peopled by monsters” before it was found and explored. The fact that it was a holding place for convicts before civilians meant many viewed it as a dark and gothic place - the Antipodes; it was a “dark subconscious of the United Kingdom” that was known as the "dungeon of the world". This article also references Barron Field, the author of the first book of verse to be published in Australia, and Frederick Sinnet, an author that lived in the mid-1800s. They both suggest that Australia was no match for England’s antiquity and romance, but instead stood as a new element in the world, a colony that “blended elements” of realists and romantics. 

“…their exploration of the anxieties of the convict system, the terrors of isolated stations at the mercy of vagrants and nature, the fear of starvation or of becoming lost in the bush, are distinctly Gothic in effect — and dare one say, uniquely, originally, Australian.”
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