Cirrus@Austlit

'The title of Rebecca Waese’s book, When Novels Perform History: Dramatizing the Past in Australian and Canadian Literature (2017) pretty much explains what the work sets out to do. When Novels Perform History consists of a series of readings of selected novels that, on their own, generally support the claims made about the way some works of fiction foreground the power and effect of drama and performance to complicate, revise or reimagine the past as recorded in settler colonies. In Waese’s own words, she explores how ‘[d]ramatic modes of fiction about the past often heighten perceptions of immediacy and sensory awareness by creating a sense of immersion or embodiment in a particular historical scene’ (1). Apart from the Introduction, there are six chapters alternating between Australian and Canadian novels.' 

(Introduction)