The 'Imagined Sound' of Australian Literature and Music

by Joseph Cummins

Overview

‘Imagined Sound’ is a unique cartography of the artistic, historical and political forces that have informed the post-World War II representation of Australian landscapes. It is the first book to formulate the unique methodology of ‘imagined sound’, a new way to read and listen to literature and music that moves beyond the dominance of the visual, the colonial mode of knowing, controlling and imagining Australian space. Emphasising sound and listening, this approach draws out and re-examines the key narratives that shape and are shaped by Australian landscapes and histories, stories of first contact, frontier violence, the explorer journey, the convict experience, non-Indigenous belonging, Pacific identity and contemporary Indigenous Dreaming. ‘Imagined Sound’ offers a compelling analysis of how these narratives are reharmonised in key works of literature and music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785270918
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	09/20/2019
Series:	Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture
Pages:	202
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Joseph Cummins is a scholar based in Melbourne, Australia. He has published widely on Australian post-war literature and music, with a focus on sound and landscape. His recent research also explores literature and family history.

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction – Imagined Sound; Part One: Listening to the Continent; 1. Reimagining ‘the centre’: Francis Webb’s ‘Eyre All Alone’ and David Lumsdaine’s Aria for Edward John Eyre; 2. Midnight Oil: Sounding Australian Rock around the Bicentenary; 3. Sound and Silence: Listening and Relation in the Novels of Alex Miller; Part Two: Listening to Islands and Archipelagos; 4. An Archipelago of Convicts and Outsiders: The Songs of The Drones and Gareth Liddiard; 5. Echoes between Van Diemen’s Land and Tasmania: The Space of the Island in Richard Flanagan’s Death of a River Guide and Carmel Bird’s Cape Grimm; 6. A Sonic Passage Between Islands: Mutiny Music by Baecastuff; Part Three: Listening to the Continental Archipelago; 7. Noisy Songlines in the Top End; Coda; Notes; Works Cited; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Book Review

Editorial Reviews

‘These essays take us closer to a recognition of the role of sound in the formation of national identity, a far more complex dynamic than simplistic celebrations of, for example, “national” musics. They reveal the contradictions and fissures in the bland generalisations that have generally underpinned representations of Australian identity.’
—Bruce Johnson, Professor, University of Technology Sydney, Australia; University of Turku, Finland; and University of Glasgow, UK

"Imagined Sound offers listening as a powerful vehicle through which we can understand the events, people and landscapes we think we know. Listening, Joseph Cummins says, needs to be practised and is always open to improvement. His scholarly approach and diversity of subject choices have resulted in an erudite and persuasive book, one that fosters listening and puts a focus on imagination, something even Albert Einstein considered more important than knowledge. — Loretta Bernard, Loudmouth, May 2021"

From the Publisher