A. A. Phillips
Oxford Companion to Australian Literature:
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A.A. Phillips
(1900-85) was born in Melbourne of Jewish ancestors who had arrived in Australia from England in the 1820s, and of parents who were strongly nationalistic in sentiment; his father was president of the ANA. Phillips studied at the universities of Melbourne and Oxford before becoming a schoolmaster at Wesley College, 1925-71. While on the committee of the English Association, his interest in Australian literature was aroused by a request from England for a list of Australian poets for inclusion in a British Empire anthology. His own publications began with an anthology of Australian and English poetry, In Fealty to Apollo (1932, with Ian Maxwell) and a prose anthology, An Australian Muster (1946). Phillips's first major impact on the Australian literary scene came with his article 'The Cultural Cringe' in Meanjin (1950), in which he expresses his dissatisfaction with the prevailing Australian attitude of cultural servility. He published Thinkers At Work, a book on logical writing (1946, with A. Boyce Gibson); edited Five Radio Plays (1949), which includes Douglas Stewart's The Fire on the Snow; Ten Tales: A Collection of Short Stories (1951); Presenting Ideas (1952, with Mary Phillips); and Australian Poetry (1956). A selection of his critical articles from Meanjin and Overland was published as The Australian Tradition (q.v., 1958), a work which emphasises the importance of the democratic theme in the development of a distinctive Australian literary tradition. The Australian Tradition established him as one of Australia's leading critics and the book itself has become an integral part of the literary heritage it posits. Phillips edited, with valuable introductions, Bernard O'Dowd (1963) and Barbara Baynton's Bush Studies (1965), and compiled Coast to Coast (1968), which emphasises rural and country town stories and reflects Phillips's belief in the importance of the Henry Lawson-Joseph Furphy tradition. His chief critical work, Henry Lawson (1970), although directed towards an American reading public, adds to the contribution he made to Lawson studies with his earlier articles, 'Henry Lawson as Craftsman' and 'Henry Lawson Revisited', included in the 1966 edition of The Australian Tradition. Responses (1979), edited by Brian Kiernan, is a selection of Phillips's literary journalism in his characteristic lucid, fresh and pugnacious style. A.A. Phillips, long associated with the FAW and with Meanjin, was awarded an honorary D.Litt. from the University of Melbourne in 1975 and was made foundation patron of ASAL in 1978. The A.A. Phillips Award from ASAL, introduced in 1986 and presented on an occasional basis for excellence in Australian literary scholarship, was presented for the inaugural occasion to W.H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews for The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1985). The Victorian Premier's annual awards includes the A.A. Phillips Award.
| 'The Peripatetic Philosopher', 'Sydney Partrige', 'Pom', 'Pommy' | |
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A. A. Phillips
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A. A. Phillips
Arthur Angel Phillips (1900–1985), generally known as A. A. Phillips, was an Australian writer, critic and teacher, best known for coining the term "Cultural Cringe" in his pioneering essay The Cultural Cringe, which set the early terms for post-colonial theory in Australia. He was educated at the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford, and later taught at Wesley College in Melbourne.
The Cultural Cringe was first published in the Melbourne cultural affairs journal Meanjin. It explored ingrained feelings of inferiority that local intellectuals struggled against, and which were most clearly pronounced in the Australian theatre, music, art and letters. Phillips pointed out that the public widely assumed that anything produced by local dramatists, actors, musicians, artists and writers was necessarily deficient when compared against the works of the British and European counterparts. The only ways local arts professionals could build themselves up in public esteem was either to follow overseas fashions, or, more often, to spend a period of time working in Britain. In some professions this attitude even affected employment opportunities, with only those who had worked in London being treated as worthy of appointment or promotion. Thus the cultural cringe brought about over the early to mid 20th century a pattern of temporary residence in Britain for so many young talented Australians across a broad range of fields, from the arts to the sciences.
Phillips's influential and highly controversial essay served as the focus in his later book The Australian Tradition: Essays in Colonial Culture (1958).
Bibliography
- The Australian Tradition: Studies in Colonial Culture, (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1958)
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