Misapprehensions of a Caustic Eye: A. D. Hope and the Failure of Angry Penguins as a Modernist Literary Movement

This article reconsiders A. D. Hope’s cutting appraisal of the group of young poets and artists from the University of Adelaide who have come to be known colloquially as “the Angry Penguins”. Setting aside the influence of the Ern Malley affair on the Penguins’ perceived importance, the article proposes that Hope has contributed fundamental misrepresentations about the identities of the Penguins cohort and their aspirations for Australian literary identity. Contrary to Hope’s opinion, the Angry Penguins—at least in the initial phase of their development—were not purveyors of an impenetrable brand of Australian surrealism, but were, rather, a group of diverse young poets advocating for the internationalisation of Australian cultural identity.