AustLit
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'There have been attempts to relate national characteristics “by reference to climate, habitat and soil and investing the collective subject with psychological attributes” for over two millennia. More recently historians of modern nationalism developed elaborate typologies often citing Martin Heidegger’s arguments that “the being of the human finds its essence in the being of place — the belonging together of being and topos” [MALPAS 2012 : 5-6]. And yet the challenge to the ontological connection between self and place, what Jeff Malpas describes as the “topological analysis of self and identity”, has a long philosophical tradition, too. This debate over experience, biography and nation has implications for historians who have raised empirical questions about the development of collective sensibilities over time among recent emigrant peoples, their physical peculiarities, behaviourial quirks and emergent national character. In this paper I consider the role that biography writing played in the construction of an Australian national identity geared to what Pierre Nora famously termed as the “roman national”, or the collective discourse on the history of the nation and its place in the world. I argue that Australian historians played a significant role in the history of biograpy writing and, related to it, the debate over collective Australian identity.' (Introduction)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 23 Nov 2016 13:05:45
http://www.cercles.com/n35/nolan.pdf
Country and Lives : Australian Biography and Its History
Cercles
Subjects:
- A Certain Style : Beatrice Davis, A Literary Life 2001 single work biography
- Caroline Chisholm 1950 single work biography
- Arcady in Australia : The Evocation of Australia in Nineteenth-century English Literature 1970 single work criticism
- Admiral Arthur Phillip : Founder of New South Wales 1937 single work biography
- Manning Clark : A Life 2008 single work biography
- Warrior for Peace - Dorothy Auchterlonie Green 2009 single work biography
- An Eye for Eternity : The Life of Manning Clark 2011 single work biography
- I Am Ned Kelly 1980 single work biography
- Henry Bournes Higgins : A Memoir 1931 single work biography
- Henry Handel Richardson : A Study 1950 single work criticism biography
- The Legend of the Nineties 1954 multi chapter work criticism
- In Mortal Bondage : The Strange Life of Rosa Praed 1948 single work criticism biography
- Rose Boys 2001 single work autobiography
- Dreamtime Alice : A Memoir 1998 single work autobiography
- Snake Cradle 1997 single work autobiography
- A Radical Life : The Autobiography of Russel Ward 1988 single work autobiography
- Brian Fitzpatrick : A Radical Life 1979 single work biography
- Recollections of a Bleeding Heart : A Portrait of Paul Keating PM 2002 single work biography
- Gilbert Murray, a Life 1984 single work biography
Export this record