Towards 'Until the Walls Fall Down': An Intended History of New Zealand Literature 1932-1963

Abstract

I would like first to look at the terms of my title. 'To-wards' and 'intended' are the first operative terms. This seminar is given at the beginning of a process of intensive research, and any writing beyond notes and an outline is an intention at this point, and the outline is something to work towards, modifying and filling in.

Next there is 'New Zealand Literature, 1932-1963', with those oddly specific dates. The first is probably obvious enough, the publication of the Phoenix at the University of Auckland, the self-conscious beginnings of ~ literary movement. At the same time the date points to the Queen Street Riots, a potent symbol of social and political change. Elsie Locke, involved at least indirectly in both events, points out that there was no causal relation and yet it somehow seemed right, a response to the zeitgeist, that the possibility of both literary and social revolution should be raised in the same place at the same time. But, as Patrick Evans has reminded us, 1932 is also the date of the beginnings of the New Zealand Women Writers' Society, a group mos t definitely not included in the mostly male plans for a literary revolution and not afterwards seen by those male writers as part of the history that they were writing.