Myths, heroes and anti-heroes : essays on the literature and culture of the Asia-Pacific region

This collection of essays focuses on the literature of the Asia-Pacific region.

It considers the functioning of myths, particularly those about heroes or anti-heroes in a wide range of literature from the Asia-Pacific region (including Australia).

Myths focus the values of a culture and in this volume, written by scholars from throughout the region, the myths are both various and have a certain commonality.

The subjects range from Don Bradman to cartoons to Shiva, and a poem by Vikram Seth is a bonus.

Contents

• Introduction by Bruce Bennett and Dennis Haskell
• Some Maori versions of pastoral by Ken Arvidson
• Two corroborees: Constructions of myth by Katherine Susannah Pritchard and Mudrooroo by Sue Hosking
• Heroes against empire: Reading Aboriginal texts by Veronica Brady
• The myth of divine kingship in Malay history by Sharifah Maznah Syed Omar
• Myths, heroes and anti-heroes in Japanese culture by Orie Muta
• Disguising desire: Gender and imperialism in Jill Shearer’s ‘Shimada’ by Leigh Dale and Helen Gilbert
• The writing of heroism: Conrad, Clifford and Swettenham by Ban Kah Choon
• The politics of pathology: Wong Phui Nam’s ‘Remembering Grandma and other rumours’ by Chin Woon Ping
• Heroines in Australian fiction: Myths of adolescence by Richard Rossiter
• Constructing the female rero: Keri Hulme’s ‘The bone people’ by Suzette Henke
• Adam Lindsay Gordon as hero by Martin Gray
• The heroism of comedy: Smith’s Weekly in the 1930s by Dennis Haskell
• Tracing Emily of Emerald Hill : Subject positioning in performance by Jacqueline Lo
• Myths of a nation: History as narrative invention in David Malouf’s ‘The great world ‘by Amanda Nettlebeck
• Unhappy the land that has a need of heroes : John Romeril’s Asian plays by Gareth Griffiths
• Fugitives and prisoners: Narratives of escape by Leong Liew Geok
• Notes on the writing of Po-On by F. Sionil Jose
• The heroic type in Australian nationalist autobiography by Joan Newman
• Roro Mendut: The past and the present by Susi Sunarya
• Don Bradman: That inscrutable object of adulation by R.S. White
• The Mahabharata and modern fiction by Satendra Nandan
• The fox and the swan by Vikram Seth