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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Mudrooroo’s vampire trilogy, The Undying, Underground and The Promised Land was published at the end of the last century amid an unrelenting public questioning of the author’s claim to Aboriginal heritage through a matrilineal link. The Gothic narratives feature a white female vampire named Amelia (an anagram of Lamiae), whose violent acts of penetration and (dis)possession act as metaphors for the colonial invasion of Australia by the British' (Maureen Clark, p. 121).
Includes
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1y
Master of the Ghost Dreaming
North Ryde
:
Angus and Robertson
,
1991
Z232555
1991
single work
novel
'... Jangamuttuk is an ageing Aborigine shaman whose people have been relocated to an island off the Australian coast under the control of a former bricklayer turned missionary. Jangamuttuk helps them come to terms with the invaders' presence and, at the same time, offers them a restorative vision of community by entering into "the dreaming," a magical time every bit as real as conventional reality. ...' (Source: Amazon website)
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2y
The Undying
Pymble
:
Angus and Robertson
,
1998
Z341388
1998
single work
novel
fantasy
horror
'A daring and thrilling journey into a fantastic world of shamans, vampires and werebears, where Aboriginal Dreaming and Gothic horror are woven together to create a powerful and seamless narrative' (www.goodreads.com), a schooner of Aborigines fleeing colonial Tasmania encounter a vampire who haunts their flight, and infects several of their number (Jason Nahrung, 'Vampires in the Sunburnt Country,' 2007, p.56).
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3y
Underground
Pymble
:
Angus and Robertson
,
1999
Z27324
1999
single work
novel
horror
fantasy
'By the firelight, a mysterious storyteller weaves a captivating tale of sea journeys, vampire women, and Aboriginal Dreaming. Around the campfire the gold diggers listen and journey with George as he plunges underground to rescue his ship's captain from the horrific and mesmerising vampire woman.
Jangamuttuk, the Master of the Ghost Dreaming, sends his son, George, to rescue Wadawaka from the ghost vampire woman who has taken him as her Dark Lord and imprisoned him in her underground kingdom. Will George, in either his human form or as his Dreaming animal-self Dingo, be able to withstand Amelia's powers; will he survive the underground caverns; can he tear Wadawaka and himself from the violent but seductive power of the vampire woman? And who is the strange but familiar ghost woman accompanying the new colonial governor?' (www.qbd.com.au).
-
4y
The Promised Land
Pymble
:
Angus and Robertson
,
2000
Z447704
2000
single work
novel
horror
fantasy
Set during the gold rush days, The Promised Land focuses on the partnership of missionary-protector Sir George Augustus and the vampiress Amelia, and their bid to control colonial value - gold and blood respectively. Having returned to the Great South Land with his young wife, Lady Lucy, Augustus intends establishing a mission to educate and Christianise the native people. When he hears that gold has been found on the land, his missionary zeal increases. Accompanied by the mysterious white woman, Amelia Fraser, and a troop of native police, he sets out on an expedition to the diggings. As Sir George journeys into what he hopes is a golden future, his past begins to creep up on him, and those he thought were dead return to confront him.' Meanwhile, Amelia, with voracious (sexual) appetite and relish, preys on all continental human life, no matter what social class, gender, race or creed.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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An Exception to European Epistemological Rule : The Representation of Indigeneity in the Works of Mudrooroo and Alan Duff
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth : Essays and Studies , vol. 43 no. 1 2020;'Starting from Edward Said’s The World, the Text and the Critic, in which he theorizes the cultural movements of filiation and affiliation, this article questions the epistemological links Alan Duff’s and Mudrooroo’s novels weave with European constructs of the Indigenous subject. This theoretical framework can be helpful in understanding the relations between the individual and the collective, mostly concerning their drive toward self-definition and emancipation.' (Publication abstract)
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Politics of Magic Narratives of Aboriginal Indigenous Literature
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Narratives of Estrangement and Belonging : Indo-Australian Perspectives 2016; (p. 180-200)'Indigenous literature of Australia initially descended from the folklore, which was transmitted in the form of storytelling. This storytelling tradition is significant in the lives of Aboriginal people. Hence, it was considered essential by the elders of the Aboriginal communities to pass on this knowledge to their next generation. Because of various reasons a lot of stories were forgotten. There's been a need for restoring the lost tradition and indigenous people took the initiation towards raising awareness concerning the preservation of their cultural heritage.' (180)
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Des Carnets de G. A. Robinson Aux Romans de Mudrooroo : La Figure de L’indigène En Marge de L’Histoire1 Australienne
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: E-rea : Revue D'etudes Anglophones Revue D'Etudes Anglophones , vol. 14 no. 1 2016;'In the first half of the 19th century, George Augustus Robinson’s journals, which he had written after being officially appointed Protector of the Aborigines, show the growing interest in Indigenous populations, from the very first voyages of discovery to the beginning of the 18th century. Those first accounts were informed by Victorian attitudes and contributed to forging the stereotypes which can be found either in novels by early Australian (i.e. white) writers or, later, in those by Aboriginal writers. Wavering between the “noble savage,” who may benefit from education, and the “ignoble savage,” violent and dangerous, those stereotypes feed on these attitudes and fuel them with new anecdotes and experiences.
'This article explores how Aboriginal writer Mudrooroo engages with the relation between fiction and History in his novels, which are set at the time of the first contacts between settlers and Aborigines, Doctor Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (1983) and the Master of the Ghost Dreaming tetralogy (1991). Indeed, this rewriting of historical events starts either a conversation or a confrontation with the depositaries of the first historical accounts about those encounters between whites and Aborigines—that is to say the whites themselves.' (Publication abstract)
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Into an Age of Cultural Contagion : Vampiric Globalisation in Mudrooroo’s Master of the Ghost Dreaming Series
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 18 2016; (p. 38-52) 'This article revisit’s the work of Mudrooroo in a new and timely framework of globalisation. I argue that Mudrooroo’s Master of the Ghost Dreaming series comprises a globalisation narrative. The series performs a transmutation of the conventional postcolonial narrative in which the forces of colonialism are made known and subverted. It identifies a novel power within the Australian landscape. This new power, personified by the vampire Amelia Fraser, is more dangerous even than the white colonisers. Whereas colonial forces operate through bounded Orientalist discourses of self/other, civilised/uncivilised, white/black, Amelia’s vampiric domination operates through, and is sustained by, a practice of uncontainability. Mudrooroo’s vampire has previously been read as a metaphor for white predatorial colonialism. However, I propose that Mudrooroo’s vampire Amelia is more adequately understood as the epitome of boundless cultural contagion. I consider that when thus reassessed within a global rather than a postcolonial framework, the Master of the Ghost Dreaming series provides an imaginative account of Australia’s emergence as a space of (cultural) contamination. This space corrupts and collapses discourses of authenticity and purity, thereby engendering radically new visions of being-in-the-world as informed by multivalent experiential entanglements. Through a fusion of fantastic genres that interweaves maban, mythic, and European gothic modes, the series explores the Australian landscape as a site defined by (cultural) contagion.' (Publication abstract) -
Postcolonial Rewritings of Bram Stoker´s Dracula : Mudrooroo’s Vampire Trilogy
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 18 2016; (p. 23-37) 'Indigenous-Australian fiction has experimented with subgenres of the Fantastic in various ways to secure an empowering location from which to address post/colonial dispossession. In the mid-1990s, the Australian writer and critic Mudrooroo, formerly known as Colin Johnson, proposed Maban Reality as a genre denomination for fiction which introduces the reader to the powerful and empowering universe of the Aboriginal maban or shaman, also known as the Dreaming. Mudrooroo’s coining of Maban Reality was a way of establishing an Australian variant of Magic Realism which defied a European epistemology of the universe, engaging and enabling Dreamtime spirituality as a solid pillar of Aboriginal reality. Mudrooroo had already experimented with a postcolonial reversal of the Gothic, a dark version of the Fantastic, in the first of his Tasmanian quintet, Dr Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (1983), but left its gloomy resignation to a dire Indigenous fate under colonial rule behind for the upbeat Master of the Ghost Dreaming (1993). Yet, as the result of a deep personal crisis—believed not to have an Aboriginal bloodline, in the mid-1990s he was barred from the tribal affiliation he had long claimed—Mudrooroo resorted to the gloominess of the postcolonial Gothic again in a vampire trilogy to reflect on the devastating impact of colonisation on Australian identity at large. This essay comments on the ways in which he has reflected on the present state of Australianness by rewriting Bram Stoker’s Dracula.' (Publication abstract)
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Clocktime and Dreamtime : A Reading of Mudrooroo's Master of the Ghost Dreaming
1997
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Aratjara : Aboriginal Culture and Literature in Australia 1997; (p. 111-120) -
The Empire Looks Back: Turning Back the Gaze on the Observing Subject: A Comparative Study of Mudrooroo's Master Series and Kneale's English Passengers
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Re-Presenting Otherness : Mapping the Colonial 'Self'/ Mapping the Indigenous 'Other' in the Literatures of Australia and New Zealand. Actes de la journée d'études organisée à Paris X-Nanterre le 28 juin 2003 2005; (p. 153-169) -
Magic Spilling Over the Country: Re-Sighting, Re-Siting and Re-Citing Reality in Mudrooroo's 'Master of the Ghost Dreaming' Series
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Anglistica , vol. 7 no. 2 2003; (p. 163-189) -
Vampires in the Sunburnt Country : Australian Explorations of the Vampire Gothic Landscape
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Australian Weird Fiction , no. 2 2008; (p. 61-95) -
Some Reflections on Myth, History and Memory As Determinants of Narrative
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 3 2009; (p. 143-151) 'Against a background of theoretical reflections on myth, history and memory this paper will discuss their use as narrative strategies in texts from Australia and New Zealand. Scholars differ as to the meaning of myth whether it is formed by "contradictory narratives, which become involved in one another like threads of a tapestry, too intertwined to summarize adequately, and endless" as Bidermann and Scharfstein suggest (1993, 9); "a system of communication" (Barthes 1972); or the expression of "man's understanding of himself in the world in which he lives." (Bultman 1993). I shall argue that in Malouf`s Remembering Babylon the myth of Aborigine life is central to an understanding of Gemmy, and memory gives a false almost mythical picture of life in the old country, a situation found in many postcolonial texts from settler countries. That myth is not "which raises some interesting questions about the use of myth.' Source: Anne Holden Rønning.
