In this episode we take a spooky turn as host Dr Rod Lamberts discusses ghosts, ghouls and the Australian gothic with PhD candidate Clare Burnett.
Burnett tells us that there was a time people claimed Australia didn’t have enough ‘cultural infrastructure’ to write gothic stories- but they were very wrong!
Our featured stories feature the biggest tropes of this genre: murders, ghosts, bushrangers and twist endings. What do these fears tell us of the mindset of the time?
Mentioned in the episode
The story that A Bush Story took cues from: The Ghost Upon the Rail by John Lang
Information on Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
Early Australian writers mentioned: Barbara Baynton and Marcus Andrew
A A Phillips, author of ‘The Cultural Cringe’ (1950)
Early American Gothic writers: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe
Women and the Bush by Kay Schafer
The Ghost of Bamboo Gully or The Headless Woman by Mark Antony
Main Stories
The Storyteller: An Australian Ghost Story
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
