| Gail Jones,born in 1955,is a highly acclaimed and philosophical contemporary Australian writer,whose contributions to Australian literature have been widely recognised.She has been shortlisted six times for the Miles Franklin Literary Award,the most prestigious literary award in Australia.She has also received international recognition,being nominated for prizes such as the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.Jones’ s works mainly focus on modernity,and she has conducted extensive research on this topic,demonstrating a creative approach to transforming her findings into literary texts.Jones employs a metaphorical representation of modernity in her novels,presenting a contradictory and ambiguous picture of the modern world.She portrays the intersection of the past and the present,the encounter between the modern and the non-modern,the negotiation between the fluid and the stable,and the anxiety of identity,all of which are central themes in the present dissertation.This dissertation aims to add new materials in the research on the writing of modernity in Jones’ s novels.While a few scholars have shown interest in this area,their research has primarily focused on Dreams of Speaking,with only one paper in China briefly discussing modernity without delving into further detail.Furthermore,scholars have overlooked the importance of Sorry and Sixty Lights in this context.Therefore,this dissertation will explore modern writing in all three novels and examine the characteristics of Australian modernity.It will employ the framework of modernity theory to demonstrate how the three novels embody three dimensions of modernity:liquid modernity,colonial modernity,and technological modernity.The approach used in this dissertation is deductive,where questions are raised,and corresponding conclusions are drawn,with a progressive relationship between the three main body chapters,representing modernity’s evolution in three significant periods of Australian history.The dissertation is structured into five sections,including an introduction,three main body chapters,and a conclusion.The introduction of this dissertation begins by highlighting the literary contributions of Jones and her prominence in the contemporary Australian literary world.It provides a brief overview of the existing research on Jones’ s novels both in China and other countries,and then identifies the gaps in the current research.The paper aims to explore the text-oriented approach to delve into the times and to identify the ways out of the predicament or crisis of modernity in Jones’ s novels.The selection of the novels-Sixty Lights,Sorry,and Dreams of Speaking-is explained in the context of modernity theory.The paper traces the evolution of the concept of modernity through history and situates Australian modernity in different historical periods through Jones’ s novels.The aim is to map the rheological phase of Australian modernity,and the chosen novels are seen as suitable texts to explore this concept.The introduction also provides an outline of the dissertation structure,which includes three main body chapters and a conclusion that draws together the findings of the analysis.The main body chapters employ the deductive method to explicate the text,raising pertinent questions and drawing relevant conclusions that pertain to contemporary topics closely aligned with the dissertation’s theme.Furthermore,there is a linear progression among the three main body chapters,reflecting the evolution of modernity throughout three pivotal periods of Australian history.Chapter One of this dissertation,entitled “Fluid Identity in Liquid Modernity: Sixty Lights”,examines Jones’ s novel Sixty Lights as a representation of modernity.The society described in the text reflects the development of modernity.And this chapter sheds light on the gender difference in the study of modernity,where the experiences of female writers and their female characters are frequently ignored.Therefore,this chapter focuses on women’s experience of modernity.Firstly,the chapter starts by explaining the relationship between modernity and literary modernism and how modern literature is self-affirming through self-negation.In literary form,Sixty Lights uses modernist writing techniques such as stream of consciousness,interior monologue,non-chronological order,symbolism,“light-writing”,“photomontage”,and Japanese paradigm,which confirm Jones’ s positioning of Sixty Lights as a “modernist text”.Moreover,the novel falls into the category of the neo-Victorian novel,embodied in the form and content of the text.In form,the three-decker book commonly used in Victorian novels is used.In content,it involves public facilities,trains and religious issues in the Victorian period.It also broke through the sexual constraints of the Victorian era.The chapter also highlights the significance of using "photography" as a tool to analyze the vision and modernity in the new Victorian novels,tracing the development of photographic technology from silhouette to albumen paper to Daguerreotype to spirit photography.It also refers to iconic objects of Victorian society,such as glass,mirror and gas lamp,as well as tuberculous,which is the embodiment of the dark side of modernity and the final cause of Lucy’s death.Additionally,transnational travel is a crucial embodiment of modernity.Lucy searches for the“contact zone” in five different homes and three transnational ocean travels,carrying out the practice of “intercultural for/da” and alleviating the contradiction in constructing cultural identity.Lucy becomes the unique existence of “global traveller”and “a woman of the future”.This chapter mainly presents the modern expression of Sixty Lights and the individual identity anxiety and reconstruction in Victorian Australia.Chapter two of this dissertation,titled “Traumatic Relationships in Colonial Modernity: Sorry”,delves into Jones’ s novel Sorry as a reflection of colonial modernity.It presents Australia’s unique “sorry narrative”.Following the origins of the emerging concept of colonial modernity,it employs theories of Anibal Quijano,Walter Mignolo,Homi Bhabha,Tani E.Barlow,Robert Dixon,David Carter Wang Guanglin and Antoinette Burton,pointing out its connection with colonialism and then it defines the concept “colonial modernity”.In short,colonial modernity is a variant and a new form of colonialism,one of the conditions and the dark side of modernity.In the context of colonial modernity,historical and individual trauma are presented.The historical trauma in Sorry is divided into the Stolen Generations’ trauma,racial trauma and war trauma.In the text,Mary,as the representative of the Stolen Generations,has an unfortunate fate and becomes the scapegoat of Perdita.At the same time,she also suffers from the trauma brought on by racial discrimination.The two World Wars are also the social background of the text,which is rarely mentioned in the existing studies.Both Nicholas and Perdita are deeply disturbed by the trauma of the war to some extent.The individual trauma mainly lies in Perdita’s father-daughter relationship trauma,mother-daughter relationship trauma and perpetrator trauma.Trauma needs treatment.Not only medical,like Perdita’s speech therapy,but also psychological.Recognition,mourning,reading and love are more of a healing pathway to repair post-colonial wounds,among which reading lies mainly in the reading of Shakespeare’s plays.In the tragedy,Stella and Perdita love the reading of tragedy,which offers catharsis and insight.Post-colonial Australia has a great responsibility to reconcile with its colonial past,but reconciliation is a complex process,and there is still much to go.Reconciliation should begin with the self.Chapter three is called “Aesthetic Redemption in Technological Modernity:Dreams of Speaking”.This chapter mainly discusses the Dream of Speaking from the perspective of the poetics of modernity.Firstly,it summarizes the relationship between technology and modernity and mentions the relevant theories of Aristotle,Martin Heidegger,Agnes Heller,Max Weber and Zygmunt Bauman.This leads to the sound technology concerned by the text,and talks about the auditory turn and the rise of acoustic culture.Sound narration in the text includes Humans’ voices and objects’ sounds.As for sound-based media includes telephone,radio,mobile phone,television,and cinema,which carry the narrative of sound and bring the thinking of auditory modernity.Alice and Mr Sakamoto love technology’s aesthetic but also feel lonely in the technological society.Therefore,the relationship between humans and technology presents a contradiction of modernity.Individuals have to face the fate of nihilism and individualism,and can only obtain aesthetic redemption in nature,poetry,music and friendship.The conclusion part of this dissertation first summarizes the three features of Australian modernity based on the analysis of Jones’ s novels.Through comparing European modernity with Australian modernity,this dissertation concludes that Australian modernity is belatedness,peculiarity and cosmopolitanization.Moreover,the conclusion part provides insight into Jones’ s personal attitude towards modernity.Her works are classified as “transnational writing”,and she tends to discuss Australian modernity and European modernity together,but also has a leaning towards European modernity,presenting an attitude of Europeanism.Furthermore,the conclusion suggests possible topics for future research on the modernity of Jones’ s novels.These topics include the change in consumerism,the revolution of capitalism,and the rise of surrealism,among others.These topics could offer further insight into the development of modernity in Jones’ s novels,and contribute to the wider discussion of modernity in Australian literature. |
PDF Full Text Request