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Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo : An Historical Study, Marion V. Austin-Crowe

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The focus of this thesis is Katharine Susannah Prichard's novel, Coonardoo ( 1929), and its capacity to provide a framework for the reconstruction of the historical situation in the North-West region of Western Australia during the period mid-1860s to late 1920s. The thesis has a dual purpose: to contextualise the novel in terms of the historical, political, ideological, and social situation; and to read the novel in ways which reveal its reconstruction of the wider historical context. My approach is a new historicist close reading of the text. Specific events or situations are scrutinised for their power to convey insights …