Rodney Hall and the Global Imagination offers the first comprehensive study of one of Australia's most innovative and overlooked writers.
Spanning seven decades of poetry, fiction, and cultural advocacy, this book uncovers the intellectual and artistic currents that shaped Hall's creative philosophy – from Vico's poetic wisdom and Graves's mythic thinking to Joycean experiment and Latin American fabulism. It demonstrates how Hall uses labyrinths, masks, myth, and imagination to challenge modern habits of rationality and to confront the unresolved legacies of colonisation, captivity, and national storytelling. Drawing on archival materials, forgotten early works, and new biographical insights, the study restores Hall's vital role in Australian literary history while situating his achievement within global debates on postcolonialism, philosophy, and aesthetics.
Accessible and wide-ranging, this book is attuned to readers both inside and outside the academy. It reveals Hall as a writer whose work compels us to rethink how stories are made, how history is remembered, and how the imagination shapes the world – offering fresh perspectives on creativity, memory, and the power of narrative to transform our understanding of culture and identity.