Smyth, Elizabeth (2024) That Men Should Fear: Subverting a Literary Social Order of City to Farms. In: [Presented at the 4th Australian Literary Convention]. From: 4th Australian Literary Convention: Chaos and Order, 2-5 July 2024, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

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Abstract

In a 1985 lecture published by the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, Bruce Bennett states that the ‘world of farms … is commonly thought to be inhabited by slow wits’ (41). John Naish’s farm novel That Men Should Fear (1963) subverts a literary social order that Bennett describes as descending from metropolitan intelligence and sophistication to agrarian ignorance and artlessness. Recent articles have drawn attention to Naish, a formerly overlooked author, through readings on the georgic, ecocritical, and migrant experience. In this essay, I argue that Naish’s characterisation of the farmer as an educated medical doctor subverts the literary ‘scale of civilization’ noted by Bennett to a greater extent than other major writers of Australian farm novels. A comparative study of the agrarian protagonist in Jean Devanny’s Cindie: A Chronicle of the Canefields (1949) clarifies the literary order against which Naish wrote and marks his final work as the zenith of a progressive oeuvre.

Item ID:	83094
Item Type:	Conference Item (Presentation)
Keywords:	John Naish, farm novel, Australian literature
Related URLs:	https://australianliteraryconvention.com...
Date Deposited:	16 Jul 2024 02:40
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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