Forms of Freedom: Marxist Essays in NZ & Australian Literature

In Forms of Freedom, Dougal McNeill explores how the creative literary imagination can influence progressive social change in the real world. In engaging prose and with impressive intellectual range, McNeill applies insights from Marxist critical theory to the works of selected Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian writers.

From Harry Holland, Henry Lawson and Mary Gilmore responding to the legacy of Robert Burns in the nineteenth century, to twenty-first-century novelists applying their literary imaginations to intersectional spaces and Indigenous, settler, gendered and international freedom traditions, McNeill reveals literature’s capacity to find potent forms with which to articulate concepts of, and beliefs about, freedom.

McNeill’s argument for literature as an essential ‘form of freedom’ is a resonant call for our times. Incorporating discussion of work by 13 authors from both sides of the Tasman, Forms of Freedom is an essential book for students and researchers of Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian literature.

Authors whose work is discussed in Forms of Freedom include:
Pip Adam; Mary Gilmore; Patricia Grace; Dorothy Hewett; Harry Holland; Eve Langley; Henry Lawson; Amanda Lohrey; Elsie Locke; Emily Perkins; Alice Tawhai; Hone Tuwhare; Ellen van Neerven; Albert Wendt.

Author:
Dougal McNeill teaches in the English Literatures & Creative Communication Programme at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University Wellington. He is active in the Tertiary Education Union. His other books include Writing the 1926 General Strike, co-authored with Charles Ferrall, and an edition of Harry Holland’s Robert Burns: Poet and Revolutionist.