Literary History and Avant-Garde Poetics in the Antipodes: Languages of Invention (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Avant-Garde Writing)

Avant-garde poetry in the Antipodes causes all sorts of trouble for literary history. It is an avant-garde that seems to arrive too late and yet right on time. In 1897, Christopher Brennan made his own version of Un Coup de Dés , the same year Mallarmé published it in Cosmopolis . In the 1940s, the same period avant-gardism was declared dead or fatally injured due to the Ern Malley affair, Harry Hooton began writing a significant body of experimental poetry. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Australian Dada emerged ‘belatedly’ through figures like Jas H. Duke (Tristan Tzara had previously sung Aboriginal songs at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916). First Nations and Migrant poets then began reinventing avant-garde poetry in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book maintains that such a confounding literary history poses a distinct challenge to the theories of the avant-gardes we have become accustomed to and changes our perspective of avant-garde time. Avantgarde poetry in the Antipodes causes all sorts of trouble for literary history. It is an avantgarde that seems to arrive too late and yet right on time. In 1897, Christopher Brennan made his own version of En Coup de Ds, the same year Mallarm published it in Cosmopolis. In the 1940s, the same period avantgardism was declared dead or fatally injured due to the Ern Malley affair, Harry Hooton began writing a significant body of experimental poetry. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Australian Dada emerged 'belatedly' through figures like Jas H. Duke (Tristan Tzara had previously sung Aboriginal songs at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916). First Nations and Migrant poets then began reinventing avantgarde poetry in the twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. This book maintains that such a confounding literary history poses a distinct challenge to the theories of the avantgardes we have become accustomed to and changes our perspective of avantgarde time. Cover Half Title Epigraph Title Page Copyright Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Prologue Dedication Part I Chronometries (Antiquity, 1897–1947) 1. Tzara’s Chronometer: Literary History and the Antipodal Avant-Gardes 2. 1897 in 1981: Stéphane Mallarmé avec Christopher Brennan 3. New Order of the Line: W. C. Williams, Ern Malley, Harry Hooton and the 1940s Avant-Gardes Part II: Aftershocks (1947–Vanishing Present) 4. The Dada Chronicles: Jas H. Duke and Barry Humphries 5. Expansive Geometries: Ania Walwicz’s Polish 6. Lionel Fogarty’s Historical Style 7. Traitorous Text: Amanda Stewart Off and On the Page A Wáng Gă: an Epilogue Index