Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/8815
Title: Between Revolutionary Rupture and Historic Inhibition: The Novels of Katharine Susannah Prichard
Contributor(s): Ellis, Catherine (author); McDougall, Russell J (supervisor); Dingley, Robert J (supervisor); Archer, Jeffrey R (supervisor); Croft, Julian (supervisor)
Conferred Date: 1999
Copyright Date: 1998
Open Access: Yes
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/8815
Abstract: This thesis provides a long overdue Marxist analysis of the novels of Katharine Susannah Prichard. I argue that an acknowledgement of overdetermined social/political activity, as described and defined by Louis Althusser in his explanation of Marxist dialectics, is crucial to an understanding of the discrepancy between Prichard's stated intentions for her novels and their actual impact. Tracing the "trajectory" of Prichard's novel canon along a "continuum" between 'revolutionary rupture' and 'historical inhibition', I examine each novel according to its political potency and aesthetic power. Prichard's early novels although not designed to deliver a specific or defined political message, accommodate an overdetermined dialectical discourse which ensures their political potency. In the later novels, her efforts to conform to the demands of Socialist Realism (a theory of production which was impossible to fulfil in a pre-revolutionary society) interrupt the dialectical process and displace the energy of her previous writing. As a result, these later novels are rendered politically impotent and aesthetically weak.
Publication Type: Thesis Doctoral
Rights Statement: Copyright 1998 - Catherine Ellis
HERDC Category Description: T2 Thesis - Doctorate by Research
Appears in Collections:Thesis Doctoral

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