MODULE 12

The PACIFIC/NEW ZEALAND LITERATURE

Reporters:
LoveAngel Dane Acosta
Bern Parilla III
Mikaella Potot
Lara Jean Villflor
 OBJECTIVES
Objectives: At the end of the lesson, the students should be able to:

1. Identify the hidden history of New Zealand Literature;

2. Explore the notable works of the famous authors of New Zealand;
3. Appreciate how the World War II affects the Literature of New Zealand; and
4. Execute the tasks given at the end of the module.
 PACIFIC LITERATURE
• New Zealanders have long been avid readers, but until the mid-20th century most of
the literature they consumed was imported from Britain. Keith Sinclair identified the
1950s as the decade 'when the New Zealand intellect and imagination came alive
• By the 1930s a new breed of New Zealand writers was emerging. The New Zealand
centennial in 1940 provided a further boost to the local literary scene. By the 1950s
there was a wider range of outlets for creative writing.
• The 1930s saw the emergence in New Zealand of a new breed of writers. Their
work embodied a reaction against established ideas and conventions. A growing, if
narrow, sense of nationalism was expressed, focusing on the dilemma of Pākehā.
Some major literary figures of the 1930s, including short-story writer Frank
Sargeson, poets Allen Curnow, A.R.D. Fairburn, Denis Glover.
• Only those born in the new land could see it as New Zealanders. Immigrant writers
were Britishers abroad. Most notable 19th-century writing is found not in poetry and
fiction but rather in letters, journals, and factual accounts. New Zealand literature
had to make conscious efforts to relocate the imagination and adapt the literary
tradition.
• The best of the 19th-century poets include Alfred Domett, whose Ranolf and Amohia
(1872) was a brave if premature attempt to discover epic material in the new land.
John Barr, a Scottish dialect poet in the tradition of Robert Burns; David McKee
Wright echoed the Australian bush ballad tradition. William Pember Reeves, born in
New Zealand, wrote nostalgic poems in the voice of a colonist.
• Katherine Mansfield (born Kathleen Beauchamp) died in 1923 at age 34, having laid
the foundations for a reputation that has gone on to grow and influence the
development of New Zealand literature ever since. Impatient at the limitations of
colonial life, Mansfield relocated to London in 1908, published her first book of short
stories at age 22. Two additional books published in her lifetime were followed by
posthumously published stories, collections of poems, literary criticism, letters, and
journals. She became for a time a major figure, faded for two decades, and was
rediscovered in the 1970s by feminists and by scholars examining the Bloomsbury
group.
• Mansfield once wrote, I want to make my own country leap in the eyes of the Old
World. She also made the short story respectable. But she never completed a
novel.
• The first important New Zealand novels came from two writers whose scene was
northern New Zealand. They were William Satchell and Jane Mander. In the 1930s
Ngaio Marsh began publishing the detective novels for which she became
internationally known. John Mulgan's Man Alone (1939) held in balance both the
colonial romanticism of the solitary figure in the empty landscape and the leftist
romanticism
 WRITERS OF PACIFIC LITERATURE
1. Frank Sargeson
He had begun publishing stories in the 1930s,
attempting to do for New Zealand what Mark
Twain had done for America and Henry Lawson
for Australia—find a language in fiction that
represented the New Zealand voice and
character. That Summer, and Other Stories
(1946) gathered together the best of his early
stories, and it was followed by the experimental
novel I Saw in My Dream (1949). Although both
these books were published in London, Sargeson
was seen by New Zealand writers as something
of an inspiration—a man committed to full-time
writing and to the life of literaturein New Zealand.
• 2. Maurice Duggan.
Sargeson’s most notable younger protégés
were Maurice Duggan, whose stories brought a
new level of sophistication into New Zealand
fiction, and the novelist Janet Frame, whose fame
was to outstrip that of her mentor. From her first
novel, Owls Do Cry (1957), Frames work was
internationally respected though never widely
popular. However, with the publication of her three-
volume autobiography (To the Is-Land [1982], An
Angel at My Table [1984], and The Envoy from
Mirror City [1985]) and its adaptation (written by
Laura Jones; directed by Jane Campion) into the
movie An Angel at My Table (1990), Frames work
received much wider attention, attracting interest
both because of that part of it that draws upon her
younger years, when she was wrongly diagnosed
as schizophrenic and locked away in mental
hospitals, and because of its technical
experimentation and linguistic inventiveness.
• 3. Nelle Scanlan
Thrillers, romances and other popular
writing presented an interesting
counterpoint to the concerns of 'serious'
fiction. Often these genres supported
positive stereotypes about New Zealand
and New Zealanders and deliberately
avoided analysis of social and political
issues in a calculated attempt to appeal to
both local and international audiences. This
tradition, which had taken root in the 1930s
with the work of Nelle Scanlan, Rosemary
Rees, Mary Scott and Ngaio Marsh, was
carried on by romance novelist Essie
Summers and crime novelist Elizabeth
Messenger
• 4. Maurice Gee
For a long time Gee’s best work was
considered to be his Plumb trilogy—Plumb
(1978), Meg (1981), and Sole Survivor (1983)—
which tells the story of the Christian leftist
George Plumb (based on Gees grandfather) and
the subsequent fortunes of his children and
grandchildren. His later novels, however—
including Going West (1992), Crime Story
(1994), and Live Bodies (1998)—show a further
extension of his range and ease as a novelist,
social historian, and moralist.
• 5. Maurice Shadbolts
Shadbolts background and interests
were also of the political left. The typical
central character in Shadbolts early work is a
product of a working-class background who
finds himself among writers and artists, is
involved in love affairs and marriages, but is
always concerned about politics, especially
the politics of what it means to be a New
Zealander. Strangers and Journeys (1972)
gathers together and restates all the themes of
his early work, after which Shadbolt found a
new subject in 19th-century Maori-Pakeha
relations (also explored by Stead in his novel
The Singing Whakapapa [1994]).
• Shadbolts attention focused especially on
the 1860s, the period of the New Zealand
Wars, fought between European colonists
and the Maori over control of land. His
three novels on that subject—Season of
the Jew (1986), Mondays Warriors
(1990), and The House of Strife (1993)—
are possibly his best
Thank you and
Godbless