David Meredith’s ‘Affair with America’: Re-reading Helen Midgeley in George Johnston’s My Brother Jack

IF 0.1 4区 文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
James Dahlstrom
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACT George Johnston’s novel, My Brother Jack, is set in an Australian suburb in Melbourne, the action beginning at the conclusion of the First World War. It is a time period in which American popular culture was rapidly spreading in Australia, threatening the local movie, theatre, music, and publishing industries, and America began displacing Great Britain as the provider of culture forms to Australia. This paper examines the narrator’s struggle with his identity as a metaphor for Australia’s struggle to maintain a unique cultural identity in the face of America’s burgeoning influence. It highlights the similarities between Helen Midgeley – the narrator’s wife – and the life he builds with her, and Johnston’s perceptions of American popular culture. It further places the narrator’s brother Jack in a position to represent a more ‘traditional’ Australian culture, with his demise a sad acceptance of the changing nature of an Australia that is overrun by America’s influence.
大卫·梅雷迪思的《美国风流韵事》:重读乔治·约翰斯顿的《我的兄弟杰克》中的海伦·米吉利
乔治·约翰斯顿的小说《我的兄弟杰克》以澳大利亚墨尔本的郊区为背景,故事发生在第一次世界大战结束时。这一时期,美国流行文化在澳大利亚迅速传播,威胁到当地的电影、戏剧、音乐和出版业,美国开始取代英国成为澳大利亚文化形式的提供者。本文考察了叙述者与自己身份的斗争,作为澳大利亚在面对美国迅速增长的影响时保持独特文化身份的斗争的隐喻。它突出了叙述者的妻子海伦·米吉莱(Helen Midgeley)和他与她共同建立的生活之间的相似之处,以及约翰斯顿对美国流行文化的看法。它进一步将叙述者的兄弟杰克置于一个代表更“传统”的澳大利亚文化的位置,他的死亡是对澳大利亚不断变化的本质的悲伤接受,澳大利亚被美国的影响所侵占。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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CiteScore
0.30
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0.00%
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2
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