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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Romulus Gaita fled his home in his native Yugoslavia at the age of thirteen, and came to Australia with his young wife Christina and their infant son Raimond soon after the end of World War II.
'Tragic events were to overtake the boy’s life, but Raimond Gaita has an extraordinary story to tell about growing up with his father amid the stony paddocks and flowing grasses of country Australia.
'Written simply and movingly, Romulus, My Father is about how a compassionate and honest man taught his son the meaning of living a decent life. It is about passion, betrayal and madness, about friendship and the joy and dignity of work, about character and fate, affliction and spirituality.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Text Publishing).
Adaptations
-
form
y
Romulus, My Father
( dir. Richard Roxburgh
)
Australia
:
Arenafilm
,
2007
Z1308732
2007
single work
film/TV
(taught in 1 units)
Film adaptation of Raymond Gaita's biography.
Reading Australia
This work has Reading Australia teaching resources.
Unit Suitable For
AC: Year 11 (English Unit 2)
Themes
Australian country life, belonging, identity, migrant experience, migrating to Australia, morality, overcoming adversity, suffering, the impact of the past upon the present, truth
General Capabilities
Critical and creative thinking, Information and communication technology, Intercultural understanding, Literacy, Personal and social
Notes
-
Also published in sound recording format.
Contents
- Introduction, single work criticism
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Introduction
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Romulus, My Father 2017; -
Walking in Her Footsteps : Migration, Adaptation, and the Mother’s Journey in Romulus, My Father
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Adaptation , March vol. 9 no. 1 2016; (p. 22-34) 'Philosopher Raimond Gaita’s acclaimed and much-loved memoir of his childhood in 1950s rural Victoria, Romulus, My Father (1998), was adapted for a feature film in 2007, starring Eric Bana and Franka Potente. Gaita worked closely with the film’s director, Australian actor Richard Roxburgh, and scriptwriter, English poet Nick Drake, throughout the scripting process, and wrote an extended introduction to the published screenplay. While speaking highly of the film’s production team and admiring the finished film in this introduction, Gaita’s subsequent writing in After Romulus, a collection of essays published in 2011, reveals his unease with the film’s portrayal of the character Christina, based on his mother who suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness and committed suicide at the age of 29. This article examines the dialogic relationship between the three texts of memoir, film, and essay and their attempts to empathetically imagine the life of Christine Gaita.' -
Romulus, My Father and the Australian Literary Imaginary
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: A Sense for Humanity : The Ethical Thought of Raimond Gaita 2014; -
Australian Lit.
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: World Literature Today , 1 May vol. 88 no. 3/4 2014; (p. 6)
— Review of The Watch Tower 1966 single work novel ; Romulus, My Father 1998 single work biography ; Benang : From the Heart 1999 single work novel ; The Narrow Road to the Deep North 2013 single work novel -
[Essay] : Romulus, My Father
2013
single work
essay
— Appears in: Reading Australia 2013-;'In a key moment of reflection and pause, Romulus, My Father offers the reader a key to its interpretation. The author – philosopher Raimond Gaita – tells us that ‘Plato said that those who love and seek wisdom are clinging in recollection to things they once saw’. This reference to the Greek philosopher’s work Phaedrus occurs when the boy Raimond is about eight years old. He seems already to understand much about his father, in particular his father’s goodness, which he finds expressed in his workmanship, his honesty, and his commitment to friends. And yet, as Plato forewarns us, a search for the ultimate wisdom of such things must come later – several decades on, when Gaita is faced with the task of writing his father’s eulogy. It is then that a sense of his father’s character is joined to his own search for wisdom, a combination of biography and reflection that marks the memoir form at its best, and shapes the ultimate impact of Romulus, My Father.' (Introduction)
-
Childhood Revisted
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 9 - 10 June 2007; (p. 23)
— Review of Romulus, My Father 2007 single work film/TV ; Romulus, My Father 1998 single work biography -
Untitled
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 21 no. 3 2007; (p. 27-28)
— Review of Romulus, My Father 1998 single work biography -
Australian Lit.
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: World Literature Today , 1 May vol. 88 no. 3/4 2014; (p. 6)
— Review of The Watch Tower 1966 single work novel ; Romulus, My Father 1998 single work biography ; Benang : From the Heart 1999 single work novel ; The Narrow Road to the Deep North 2013 single work novel -
Actor Philosophical About Directing Debut
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 23-24 April 2005; (p. 3) -
Tears & Cheers : Murray-Smith Reveals the Books that Made Her Laugh and Cry
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Age , 5 November 2005; (p. 30) -
Truth, Memory, and Writing About Others
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Inga Clendinnen : A Celebration 2005; (p. 17-24) 'Raimond Gaita spoke with Morag Fraser about reading Inga Clendinnen and writing truthfully. [This article] is an editied version of his thoughts.' (Publisher's blurb) - y The Self in Moral Space : Life Narrative and the Good Ithaca : Cornell University Press , 2007 Z1378660 2007 selected work criticism All of us take our moral bearings from a conception of the good, or a range of goods, that we consider most important. We are in this sense selves in moral space. Building on the work of the philosopher Charles Taylor, among others, David Parker examines a range of classic and contemporary autobiographies - including those of St. Augustine, William Wordsworth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Gosse, Roland Barthes, Seamus Heaney, and J. M. Coetzee - to reveal a whole domain of life narrative that has been previously ignored, one that enables a new approach to the question of what constitutes a 'good' life narrative. Moving from an ethics toward an aesthetics of life writing, Parker follows Wittgenstein's view that ethics and aesthetics are one. The Self in Moral Space is distinctive in that its key ethical question is not What is it right for the life writer to do? but the broader question What is it good to be? This question opens up an important debate with the dominant postmodern paradigms that prevail in life writing studies today. In Parker's estimation, such paradigms are incapable of explaining why life writing matters in the contemporary context. Life narrative, he argues, faces readers with the perennial ethical question How should a human being live? We need a new reconstructive paradigm, as offered by this book, in order to gain a fuller understanding of life narrative and its humanistic potential. (From the publisher's webpage at http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4669.)
-
Out of the Shadows
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 12-13 May 2007; (p. 4-5)
Awards
- Victoria,