Issue Details: First known date: 2002... 2002 Cultural Memory in Postcolonial Fiction : The Uses and Abuses of Ned Kelly
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Focusing on Carey's and Drewe's representations of the Ned Kelly legend, the article explores the issues of memory, cultural myths and postcolonial fiction. Huggan argues that the two novels 'illustrate the importance of the literary text in structuring the individual/collective memory process', drawing attention to the ways in which memory is dependent on metaphor, particularly metaphors of the body, to actualise remembered experience. Both works 'are postcolonial renderings, not just of one of Australia's most powerful national narratives, but also one of its most enduring and yet paradoxiacally amnesiac cultural myths. In remembering Ned Kelly, both writers draw attention to alternative histories inscribed upon the wild colonial body, through which tha nation's chequered past can be creatively transformed and its present critically reassessed.' The article concludes with reflections on the malleability and current fashionability of the Kelly legend, assessing its implications for 'a Wester ex-settler society whose own thriving memory industry bears so many of the contradictory signs of the nation's colonial past'.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Literary Studies ALS vol. 20 no. 3 May 2002 Z963627 2002 periodical issue 2002 pg. 142-154
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The AustLit Anthology of Criticism Leigh Dale , Linda Hale , St Lucia : AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource , 2010 Z1679436 2010 anthology criticism The articles collected here have been selected with non-specialist readers in mind and aim to provide insights and valuable understandings into the works of important Australian writers. Upper secondary and lower tertiary students and general readers will find these articles useful for the study of leading Australian writers whether that is happening in years 11 and 12; first, second and third year university courses; or reading groups. St Lucia : AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource , 2010 pg. 4

Works about this Work

'Grace of the Crocodiles' : Towards Deterritorialization Marc Delrez , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Engaging with Literature of Commitment : The Worldly Scholar (Volume 2) 2012; (p. 231-244)

'In an article entitled 'Minimal Selves,' Stuart Hall suggests that 'identity' is formed at the unstable point where the 'unspeakable' stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture.' This essay is an attempt to explore just such an articulation of identity, as it crystallizes at the boundary between the private and the public in one of Robert Drewe's most recent novels, Grace (2005)...' (From author's introduction 231)

Revisiting Australia : Historical Fabrications, Telling Histories/Stories and Other Colonial Delusions in Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake Sarah Zapata , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature 2010; (p. 219-236)
Revisiting Australia : Historical Fabrications, Telling Histories/Stories and Other Colonial Delusions in Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake Sarah Zapata , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature 2010; (p. 219-236)
'Grace of the Crocodiles' : Towards Deterritorialization Marc Delrez , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Engaging with Literature of Commitment : The Worldly Scholar (Volume 2) 2012; (p. 231-244)

'In an article entitled 'Minimal Selves,' Stuart Hall suggests that 'identity' is formed at the unstable point where the 'unspeakable' stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture.' This essay is an attempt to explore just such an articulation of identity, as it crystallizes at the boundary between the private and the public in one of Robert Drewe's most recent novels, Grace (2005)...' (From author's introduction 231)

Last amended 6 May 2015 14:41:30
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