Reading intertextually : art, fiction, and material culture in Patrick White and Sidney Nolan
Creators: name: Caney, Diane
Publisher: name: University Of Tasmania
Year: 2023

description: The aim of this thesis is to explore how it is that texts intertext; and how that intertextuality is affected by various aspects of textual production: both that which relates to the material and cultural productions of texts, and that which relates to readerly constructions of textuality and intertextuality. It also explores the implications of reading intertextually: the sorts of readings that can be made, as well as how reading intertextually can inform the ways in which we then create new texts of material production. The various processes by which we create intertextual texts means that boundaries of textual medium and genre are being continually dissolved and reestablished. I examine the implications of the erosions of barriers that have been used traditionally to separate various aspects of textuality, and I investigate the sorts of boundaries that are enabled by intertextuality. As well as exploring the broad meaning of the words reading, text, and intertext, I also read specific ways in which the works of Patrick White and Sidney Nolan intertext, exploring the slippages of meaning and perception that are caused by the intertextuality of a variety of their texts. I investigate the ways in which their works intertext with other art, with other writings, and with the wider contexts of Australian and global culture. Some broader questions relating to textuality and intertextuality are given close attention in the introduction, as are the terms and reading strategies used in the thesis. The four main sections of the thesis are i) translation rights, ii) disrupting texts, iii) flux, and iv) deterritorialisation. Translation rights begins with an analysis of the positions of White and Nolan within Australian culture, after which I read intertextually White's novels Riders in the Chariot and Voss, and Nolan's art, also observing ways in which those texts intertext with various notions of national identity and historico-mythography. Each of the other three sections begins with a different meditation on the nature of textuality and intertextuality, in which I propose a variety of ways in which the activity of reading intertextually might be mapped. These sections also include specific intertextual readings of the works of White and Nolan. I do not attempt to retrieve \objective\" meanings from the texts of White and Nolan rather I acknowledge my readings as subjective and transient arguing that texts exist in a state of flux during acts of reading as they intertext with various other entities involved in signic play including: myself as reader other readers (inter)texts and the complex cultural codings in which textual play takes place. Disrupting texts includes a discussion of written epigraphs and the ways in which cover-illustrations (and other visual texts) can be read as visual epigraphs. This section also studies how theories of livres d'artistes intertext with literary theory. In flux I adapt the graphics of semiotics in order to more adequately map the activity of reading intertextually; and then explore the intertextuality at work between Nolan's Eliza Fraser series and White's A Fringe of Leaves. Deterritorialisation investigates the ways in which intertextuality causes the deterritorialisation of all texts; before presenting a series of intertextual readings of the works of both White and Nolan with the poetry of Rimbaud. I conclude by exploring the implications of the (inter)textual play enabled as art fiction and material culture (and the discursive practices with which they are surrounded) are read intertextually."