Cirrus@Austlit

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'.

'In a review of Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, the poet Peter Porter commented that the three most potent icons in Australian popular history were Ned Kelly, Phar Lap, and Donald Bradman. Of these Ned Kelly has the longest history, and has undergone numerous revivals and reconfigurations. One might also argue that he was the least successful of the three; he was a man who saw himself as a victim of empire, class, race, and the judicial system. At least that is how Kelly presents himself in The Jerilderie Letter, and many of those who have written about him affirm that this view was justified. So the question is why and in what ways Ned Kelly has become so potent; why cannot Australians let him die? And what does he mean to Australians, or indeed the rest of the world, today? This essay will glance briefly at some early representations of Kelly, before discussing in more detail Peter Carey's revival of Kelly, and considering the significance of that revival in the present.' (Author's abstract)

Author's abstract: Ned Kelly is currently a dominant figure in the Australian national consciousness, largely due to the commercial and critical success of Peter Carey's novel True History of the Kelly Gang, which repositioned the Kelly narrative firmly at the center of Australian popular culture and created a commercial and cultural environment conducive to the production of further revisions of the narrative. Conclusion Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang has quickly become one of the most important works in Australian literature due to the cultural and historical importance of the narrative it retells, the commercial success of the novel, the critical accolades the author has received, the new prominence it has brought to the Kelly narrative, and the intense debate it has inspired.

Burrows looks at His Natural Life as a melodramatic vision that derived from English and French fiction and seeks to describe what makes good melodrama. The audience and their recognition of conventions supplied by the author are very important, but Burrows argues that "when the susurrus of the pathetic fallacy is shut out of mind" there remains echoes of Romanticism and the sublime. Despite the narrative instability caused by Clarke's occasional use of antithetical figures (which challenges readers' conventional views), Rufus Dawes' fate stabilizes his character as a hero of melodrama.

Robson examines Clarke's use of recorded history and the extent to which these records were adapted for the purposes of the narrative. While some items were exaggerated for effect, others are almost exact transcriptions of original records. Robson concludes that His Natural Life is far from the truth in terms of the incidents surrounding Rufus Dawes, but he acknowledges that Clarke's use of recorded history produced "a more effective human document than it otherwise might have been.

Runcie considers His Natural Life in relation to the search for a moral framework by John Stuart Mill and others to replace the outdated one of the first half of the nineteenth century. Runcie argues that His Natural Life is a dramatization of the failure of contemporary society to adequately deal with religion, government and personal spirituality. Rufus Dawes' spiritual life is the innermost subject of the novel as he experiences a descent and ascent before reclaiming his name, Devine, at the end of the novel.

Webby examines the different themes and content of several stage and film adaptations of His Natural Life, revealing changing attitudes to issues such as cannabalism, homosexuality and melodrama.

Wilding discusses Clarke's attempts to influence his Victorian readers to sympathise with Dawes and, through Dawes, with the convicts themselves. While the connections between John Rex and Rufus Dawes seem implausible, they offer a special effect in the presentation of alter-egos. The connections allow a comparison of the freedom of each, but Wilding argues that none of the characters are free. Wilding concludes that guilt is a major theme that originates in the first Oedipal killing and reverberates in other crimes committed throughout the novel.