Issue Details: First known date: 1989... 1989 Popular Perceptions of an Unpopular People, 1929-1945
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

This chapter examines works written between 1929 and 1945 by non-Aboriginal authors representing Aboriginality. Works analysed in detail are Coonardoo (1929) by Katharine Susannah Prichard, Capricornia (1938) by Xavier Herbert, Lasseter's Last Ride: An Epic of Central Australia (1931) by Ion Idriess, The Passing of the Aborigines (1938) by Daisy Bates and Native Legends (1929) by David Unaipon. Shoemaker argues the following points: Firstly, that there is a tendency for academics to overemphasise the importance of works by Prichard and Herbert as indicators of a supposedly new and enlightened view. Secondly, that by highlighting such works as beacons of enlightenment, academic criticism has cast a shadow over the extremely popular works of historical fiction by Idriess. And thirdly, that a number of other popular works of literature written and published between 1929 and 1945, for example, Daisy Bates's The Passing of the Aborigines, still exerted some influence on Australian readers as late as the 1960s. Finally, Shoemaker's analysis concludes with David Unaipon, who published during this period, was almost totally ignored until the 1970s, and even now still deserves far more study than he has received.

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    y separately published work icon Black Words, White Page : Aboriginal Literature 1929-1988 Adam Shoemaker , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1989 Z106800 1989 single work criticism (taught in 1 units)

    Shoemaker's primary concern is to look at the beginning of 'black people's' writing in Australia since the 1960s and focus on the nascent literary canon emerging through Aboriginal writing. Shoemaker moves the readership through non-Aboriginal authors such as Katharine Susannah Prichard (1929) and Xavier Herbert (1938) in a chapter entitled 'Popular Perceptions of Unpopular People to Progress and Frustrated Expectations: The Era Since 1961'. Where Aboriginal writing begins, for Shoemaker's purposes, is an area of literary production he describes as 'fourth world literature'.

    St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1989
    pg. 39-62
Last amended 23 Feb 2011 18:01:52
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