Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 'Relaxed and Comfortable' : Carey, Grenville and the Politics of the History Novel
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The relationship between history and literature is symbiotic, particularly in the context of building foundational myths about a relatively new nation-state. In Australia, with barely two hundred years of white settlement compared to an estimated sixty thousand years of Indigenous occupation, discussions about the colonial encounter have an immediate political relevance to both political and artistic representations of Indigenous people. This chapter links the contentious issues in the preambles written for the Australian constitution during the 1999 campaign for a Republic with the current state of the historical novel in Australia' (p. 233)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Remaking Literary History Helen Groth (editor), Paul Sheehan (editor), Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Press , 2010 Z1809596 2010 anthology criticism 'Enquiries into the relationship between literature and history continue to stir up intense critical and scholarly debate. Alongside the new hybrid categories that have emerged out of this ferment―life-writing, ficto-criticism, "history from below", and so on―there has been a welter of new literary histories, new ways of tracking the connections between the written word and the historically bound world. This has resulted in renewed discussion about distinguishing the literary from the non-literary, about dialogues taking place between different national literatures, and about ascertaining the relative status of the literary text in relation to other cultural forms.

    Remaking Literary History
    seeks to clarify the diversity of issues and positions that have arisen from these debates. Central to the book's approach is a rigorous and constructive questioning of the past, across disciplinary boundaries. This is carried out through four detailed and engrossing sections that explore the relationship between memory and forgetting; what it means to be 'subject' to history; the upsurge of interest in trauma and redemption; and the question of historical reinvention, which demonstrates how the overwriting of history continues to reinvigorate the literary imagination.' (Publisher's blurb).
    Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Press , 2010
    pg. 233-244
Last amended 30 Sep 2011 09:56:53
233-244 'Relaxed and Comfortable' : Carey, Grenville and the Politics of the History Novelsmall AustLit logo
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