The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety [Hardcover]

Peter Pierce (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521594405 | ISBN-13: 978-0521594400 | Publication Date: June 28, 1999

The figure of the lost child has haunted the Australian imagination. Peter Pierce's original and sometimes shocking study The Country of Lost Children traces this ambivalent and disturbing history. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from poetry, fiction and newspaper reports to paintings and films, The Country of Lost Children analyzes the cultural and moral implications of the lost child in Australian history and illuminates a crucial aspect of our present condition. At its core are confronting, often troubling, questions about childhood itself.

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

The figure of the lost child has haunted the Australian imagination. Peter Pierce's original and sometimes shocking study The Country of Lost Children traces this ambivalent and disturbing history. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from poetry, fiction and newspaper reports to paintings and films, The Country of Lost Children analyses the cultural and moral implications of the lost child in our history and illuminates a crucial aspect of our present condition. At its core are confronting, often troubling, questions about childhood itself.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521594405
• ISBN-13: 978-0521594400
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,737,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Why Children?, May 13, 2007

By 

Lizz (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety (Paperback)

Peter Pierce's critical study 'The Country of Lost Children: An Australaian Anxiety' is an important contribution to Australian literary criticism. The work surveys the development of the lost child motif in literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It theorises that the motif embodies human (and colonial) anxieties about the vast and untamed natural environment of nineteenth century literature, folktales and visual arts. He asserts that over time, this preoccupation has shifted to a more inward societal critique of the potential for danger and menace in humanity itself. Pierce draws on ficition, theatre (briefly), film and true stories, demonstrating the pervasiveness of this trope in collective memory, lived experience and the imaginary. This survey opens the field to more detailed critical study of texts, broader cultural formations and the reasons for this phenomenon, as well as ongoing analysis of the potency of the figure of the child in the Australian consciousness, especially when we think about the future. More study of popular culture and true stories would be beneficial to this project. Overall, an important contribution to Australian studies.