Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend: Australian women’s war fictions
Donna Coates
War is traditionally considered a male experience. By extension, the genre of war literature is a male-dominated field, and the tale of the battlefield remains the privileged (and only canonised) war story.
In Australia, although women have written extensively about their wartime experiences, their voices have been distinctively silenced. Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend calls for a re-definition of war literature to include the numerous voices of women writers, and further recommends a re-reading of Australian national literatures, with women’s war writing foregrounded, to break the hold of a male-dominated literary tradition and pass on a vital, but unexplored, women’s tradition.
Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend examines the rich body of World Wars I and II and Vietnam War literature by Australian women, providing the critical attention and treatment that they deserve. Donna Coates records the reactions of Australian women writers to these conflicts, illuminating the complex role of gender in the interpretation of war and in the cultural history of twentieth-century Australia.
By visiting an astonishing number of unfamiliar, non-canonical texts, Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend profoundly alters our understanding of how Australian women writers have interpreted war, especially in a nation where the experience of colonising a frontier has spawned enduring myths of identity and statehood.
The selection of letters, combined with the annotations, and enhanced by the links to outside digital resources, make this volume a significant contribution to scholarship.
- Release
- Nov-2023
- ISBN
- 9781743329245
- RRP (AUD)
- $60.00
- Pages
- 378
- Format
- Paperback & ebook
- Category
- Literary studies
Donna Coates
Donna Coates was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. She is an Associate Professor in the English Department of the University of Calgary, Canada.
Sydney University Press
Sydney University Press is a not-for-profit, scholarly publisher of research-based books that engage, inspire and stimulate debate. We believe in the value of research, and the power of books to change the world. Our mission is to enable, support and facilitate the sharing of outstanding research.
- Rights
-
World ex ANZ
- Contact
-
Susan Murray
- Website