Between Margin And Center

Elizabeth Jolley's (1923-) rising reputation, as an author, is a wonder in contemporary Australian literature. Her achievements have not only somewhat changed the direction of Australian literature, but brought it to the forefront of international literature as well. She published her first novel at the age of fifty-seven in 1980. Since then, besides numerous prose writings, radio plays, and five collections of short stories, she has published altogether fifteen novels in twenty-one years. She has won many awards, of which the Miles Franklin Award in 1987 for The Well was one, and the Booker Prize nomination in 1988 was another. With a peculiar writing style that captivates readers and confounds critics, Jolley and her novels have become heated topics of controversy.This dissertation offers a semiological approach to Elizabeth Jolley's fiction. The title of the dissertation - Between Margin and Center: A Semiological Study on Jolley's Fiction - elucidates its key words and parameters, as semiologically speaking real signs touch issues of universal human meanings. I have set Jolley's fiction against the background of the discussion of the margin and center dichotomy in Western ideology. It is from here we find the starting point for the iconoclastical significance of Jolley's fiction, and from here we can understand why some critics define her fiction as obscure and dark. From this perspective we can find the germ of the controversial and important meanings in her fiction. Although many critics are enthusiastic about Jolley's fiction, most of their comments rest on the perceptual level, failing to see the philosophical depth behind her play of words. I think the real reason for this failure has been the lack of a rationale within the Western literary culture to perceive the unorthodox depths of this amazing artist. As presented in the dissertation, the theoretical thinking of semiology can help us understand Jolley's fiction outside Western dichotomous conceptualization of the world. With the semiological approach, we can discern the dynamic mechanisms and cultural implications in her fiction.This dissertation takes up five of Jolley's novels and a biographical book, as a means to investigate the inner significance of her fiction. In doing so I have developed a scheme for perhaps clarifying the different phases of Jolley's writing.