‘Passion Du Sens’ for an Australian Novella-Bildungsroman: an Australian fiction writer’s purpose-driven exploration of the novella-Bildungsroman form

This thesis consists of a novella and an accompanying exegesis. The exegesis is a critical reflection on the process of creative writing and research that resulted in The Deaths (the novella-Bildungsroman here included). The fiction-writing process also hinged on the periodic specialist-reader feedback of my supervisor, which was brought to bear at various major draft stages. The practical impact of this feedback is also reflected in the exegesis. The exegesis is by no means offered as exhaustive, or prescriptive; it is not a manifesto on how to write a novella-Bildungsroman (or, more specifically a novella-Künstlerroman/artist’s-novel). Rather, taken with the fictional product, this praxis-oriented writing may indirectly, or, in principle, inform a literary creative writing process through the cycles of planning, composition, revision, research and re-development. Read in conjunction with the novella, the exegesis may provide apprentice novellaists with a working definition of a particular contemporary Australian novella-Bildungsroman: one that is flexible, genre-focused, research-driven and evidence-based. It is hoped that writers will find useful the practical insights into the dominant structural forces and modalities that shaped The Deaths as a hybrid genre (novella-Bildungsroman), and those less central, sub-generic, elements which also pertain to The Deaths. Similarly, the literary-critical principles engaged with to address the challenges of realising this novella-Bildungsroman may be useful for contemporary Australian creative writers of ‘literary’ fiction