AustLit

'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.