Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Contextualizing Aborigine-White Relations :The Need for Enemies at a Time of Identity Anxiety
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In defining Australian national identity, two issues of major concern are simply inevitable. One is Australia’s link with the British Empire and British culture; the other is the relation of the white people with other ethnicities, particularly with the Australian aborigines. Both issues have played significant and even decisive roles in Australian national history, and both cast shadows over the contemporary Australian mind. Discussion of Aboriginal history should not be restricted to its own ethnic culture, tradition and identity alone; instead, it should include as a necessary part of its concern how the aborigines have helped define white identity in history and how they found their way into the Australian national consciousness. Among the many Australian authors who take up the task of representing either early Australian history or the colonizing of the Aborigines, Thomas Keneally is one of the few who weave both into his narrative. ' (159-160)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon From Fixity to Fluidity : The Theme of Identity in Thomas Keneally's Fiction Xiaojin Zhou , Qindao : China Ocean University Press , 2009 Z1741824 2009 multi chapter work criticism

    'Born into an Irish Catholic family in Sydney, Thomas Keneally published his first novel, The Place at Whitton, in 1964, four years after he abandoned his study for priesthood. The success of that gothic horror set in a seminary triggered a successful writing career of over forty years, in which he produced 25 novels, while making frequent and fruitful incursions into the world of nonfiction. Today Keneally is Australia’s best-known writer and Australia’s living treasure. Although Spielberg’s Schindler’s List became a media event and a household word in the 1990s, it hardly qualified Keneally as an overnight sensation. By that time, Keneally was already a widely acclaimed writer in Britain and America, truly “international”, as the Australians would like to put it, since he had publishers on both sides of the Atlantic and had won the 1982 Booker Prize. Despite discernible changes in his earlier and later works, it’s almost impossible, even as a critical expediency, to divide Keneally’s writing career into clearly marked stages. Writing on both “Australian” and “international” themes, and constantly shifting between past and present, Keneally failed to follow the normal path of arrival, growth and maturity, much to the disappointment of some Australian critics, who eagerly delighted in anticipating the destination of his literary journey...' (Author's introduction)

    Qindao : China Ocean University Press , 2009
    pg. 159-176
Last amended 18 Sep 2015 07:38:11
159-176 Contextualizing Aborigine-White Relations :The Need for Enemies at a Time of Identity Anxietysmall AustLit logo
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