The first chapter of the thesis outlines the postcolonial and poststructural theory that informs the readings in the later chapters. One of the principal contentions of the study, then, is that the novels under consideration deploy a postmodern aesthetic of the sublime to undermine colonial discourses. White, Ondaatje and Malouf chart their protagonists’ inability to comprehend and document the landscapes they encounter, and the ways in which this failure calls into question their subjectivity and the epistemologies that underpin it.
The study demonstrates that these novels all emphasise the instabilities inherent in imperial epistemology. This thesis argues that Patrick White’s Voss, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life depict landscape in a manner that reveals the inadequacies of imperial epistemological discourses and the rationalist model of subjectivity which enables them. My paper has at its centre the idea that Australian literary tradition has as its backbone the subtle and real links between history and geography. I attempt to link the process of displacement and exile to the phenomenon of dreaming placing at the centre the colonising power of language which is an integral theme of the work. This paper looks at how Malouf has subtly dovetailed the Australian myth of exile – an integral element of the Australian identity – with the aboriginal cultural phenomenon of dreaming and dream time. The experiences of Ovid in this alien land can also be seen in relation to the post- colonial Australian experience. It looks into the possible psychological and physical reverberations that an exile into the edges of civilization from a metropolitan life in Rome would create in the poet. Based on the legendary exile of Ovid in Tomis, this novel very subtly captures his last days.
An Imaginary Life hailed as among David Malouf’s fully mature works, is considered a masterpiece in the history of Australian Literature.
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