SETTING IN AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN'S NOVELS (REGIONALISM, TRADITION)

The Australian setting dominates the ethos of its human inhabitants and equally its literature for children. The literary element setting in a select group of Australian major and minor children's writers is examined through a conceptural framework developed from three areas: literary critics and theorists; the bush tradition as examined by Australian literary critics, historians and sociologists; and North American and Canadian regionaism. As well, the novels' style and particularly figurative language and the authors' personal reflections and biographical data relative to the settings portrayed and exaimined.;The novels examined reinforce the bush traditions's typical and admired image of the Australian as courageous, strong, enduring and resourceful. As well, the traditional view of the bush as both romantic and deterministic is upheld along with its accompanying philosophies of fatalism, stoicism, mateship and an ironic sense of humor. Rural life is viewed as offering a physical ad spriitual salvation not possible within civilization.;Many of the authors' birthplaces and childhood environments provide the impetus for their novels, with such settings rendered in verisimilitude, recreated in essence or symbolized to express a deeply felt concern for the land. All authors ultimately are concerned with humans' relationship to the Australian land and promote an agginity with humans' relationsip to the Australian land and promote an affinity with the land as providing a natural and harmony.;Setting is explored in five patterns: setting as a way of life, presenting specific descriptions of life in a particular locale or within a particular cultural of historical milieu; setting as determinant, exerting physical and social control over the life of the region; setting as a catalyst for character change, developing characters, usually through a environmental catastrophe; setting as metaphor, exploring metaphorical relationships between aspects of setting and humans; and setting as mythology and tradition, exploring the traditions and myths concerning the enviroment.