Smyth, Elizabeth (2023) The Sugarcane Novel: Questions of Genre and Region. In: [Presented at the ASAL 2023 Conference]. From: ASAL Annual Conference 2023: Recentring the Region, 4-7 July 2023, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

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Abstract

Cheryl Taylor and Elizabeth Perkins (2007) describe the novels of John Naish as either ‘sugar country novels’ or ‘canefields novels’. More recently, Georgic Literature and the Environment: Working Land, Reworking Genre (2023) edited by Sue Edney and Tess Somervell examines farming literature to further understandings of ‘the georgic’ as a genre. This paper builds on this work by examining the implications of establishing a genre of ‘the sugarcane novel’. Using John Frow’s Genre (2006) as a guide, I argue that the sugarcane plant rather than the land upon which it grows should be the core determinant. This allows the inclusion of novels set primarily in a town, such as Ronald McKie’s The Crushing (1977), or in other off-farm locations and thus offers a way of curating a collection of novels for a more complete understanding of the social and literary influences of sugarcane than by considering only those set on farms. Given that sugarcane grows in and symbolises a distinct geographical region, this paper also asks how we might use the boundaries, interplay and entanglement of genre and region to transcend Western notions of land and the nonhuman.

Item ID:	82820
Item Type:	Conference Item (Presentation)
Keywords:	regionalism, genre, georgic, farm novel, sugarcane, Australian literature
Related URLs:	Organisation
Date Deposited:	21 May 2024 00:20
FoR Codes:	47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470502 Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1302 Communication > 130203 Literature @ 100%
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