Exploring Gaps and Silences

You will use the following questions to explore the gaps and silences that are found in three traditional Australian poems: "Waltzing Matilda", "Moreton Bay" and "All for me grog". All three of these poems can be found in the Semester One, Term One folder of Units of Work on Blackboard. They are in the subfolder called "National Identity is Represented in Texts" under a file named "Australian Poems".

Do the first poem in a small group, the second in pairs and the third by yourself.

Key Questions:

1)    Which qualities and groups are marginalised?

2)     Who is left out?

3)    Which qualities are privileged?

      4) How does the language of the text construct a sense of community with the reader?   

         Or, how would the texts have constructed a sense of community with original audiences?

     5) What aren't you supposed to think while reading these poems?

     6) Overall, summarise the qualities that are encoded in and privileged by these texts.

Overview of Unit Direction

We're all on a journey

The integrative device for the unit is the idea that all texts are selective.

In australian texts there is an idea of what it means to be Australian. This/these representations can be explicit or implicit. There is a traditional, dominant view encoded in texts like bush ballads and the words of writers like A.B Patterson. These views/representations romanticize "the bush" setting up a binary opposition between it and the town.

This is a view/representation that also privileges certain masculine qualities  and marginalises/ silences other groups/ways of viewing issues.

However, there is an increasing number of contending voices which offer alternative views of what it means to be 'An Australian'.