This study discusses modern Australian life writing by sons who focus
on their fathers. Termed patriography (by Couser) or The Son’s Book
of the Father (by Freadman), this rich field of relational
autobiography offers insights into modes of masculinity, notions of
identity and heritage and the ethics of representation. The current
proliferation of ‘father memoirs’ in the marketplace demonstrates
that such writing is fulfilling and being fuelled by the need to
better understand the traditionally lesser-known parent. Beginning
with an analysis of the paradigmatic case of the sub-genre, Edmund
Gosse’s Victorian masterpiece ‘Father and Son’, the study moves
quickly on to embrace its Australian literary frame, demonstrating
Gosse’s influence on a range of classic Australian autobiographies,
including Hal Porter’s ‘The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony’.
Mansfield then offers five ‘case studies’ on the seminal works of
the current era: Raimond Gaita’s ‘Romulus, My Father’; Richard
Freadman’s ‘Shadow of Doubt’; Peter Rose’s ‘Rose Boys’;
John Hughes’s ‘The Idea of Home’; and Robert Gray’s ‘The
Land I Came Through Last’. How do these authors ‘perform’ their
masculinity in the act of writing the father? What are some of the
ethical complexities that must be negotiated when representing the
reticent-laconic in autobiography? And, ultimately, how does one
decide what an ethical representation of the father is? These are some
of the questions Mansfield addresses in ‘Australian Patriography’,
the first study of its kind in Australian literature.
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780857283405
Publisert
2016
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Anthem Press (NBN)
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter