The unique environmental qualities of Patrick White’s writing, and his later-life activism, have perhaps suffered due to a focus on the psychological and spiritual aspects of his biography. 'Embracing the environmental, eco-materialist and planetary turn in the humanities, prompted by the Anthropocene, this paper offers a reading of Voss as an environmental and planetary epic. Cox,Īustralian Literary Studies, 11 December vol. Eliot’s famous line from The Waste Land, but love.' (Publication abstract) ‘The Kingdom of Dust’ : Voss as Planetary Epic Samuel J. The ultimate triumph of Voss’s material poetics, manifested largely through Laura, is to discover not simply fear in a handful of dust, as in T.S. Whereas colonial Sydney seeks stability and impermeability through their relation to stone and the material world, the journey inland will fracture and fissure established forms. I argue that in White’s novel a confrontation occurs between an inherited European literary aesthetics, connected to humanist ideals, and the dry and uniquely Australian material environments of the interior. Tracking a journey through stone and rock to dust, I connect Voss’s material poetics to larger themes and the wider question of the texts relationship to the Australian environment. Informed by the environmental and material turn in the humanities and turning away from the purely psychological and ‘country of the mind’ readings of White’s novel, I explore Voss’s engagement with various non-realist traditions to open questions on how literature and the text might materialise new sources of intimacy and interconnection with the mineral realm.

Cox,Ģ 2022 Abstract 'This article argues the final and arguably most permeable frontier Patrick White’s Voss sets out across is the material. I'll Show You Love In a Handful of Dust Samuel J.

Summary of voss by patrick white