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Settler Colonialism and the Formation of Australian National Identity : Praed's 'Bunyip' and Pedley's 'Dot and the Kangaroo' single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Settler Colonialism and the Formation of Australian National Identity : Praed's 'Bunyip' and Pedley's 'Dot and the Kangaroo'
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This essay discusses stories that performed the task of defining the identity of the white settler community at the turn of twentieth-century Australia. It concentrates on two late nineteenth-century narratives, Rosa Praed's short story 'The Bunyip' (1891) and Ethel C. Pedley's children's book Dot and the Kangaroo (1898) which, in different ways, utilise the mystery and danger of the Australian outback as building blocks for representing experiences that were supposedly familiar to all Australians. These two stories describe their white characters' responses to Aboriginal legends and rituals as seminal moments in their personal growth, implying that first-hand knowledge of Aboriginal traditions was an essential element in the collective experience of Australian settlers.' (p. 109)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

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    y separately published work icon Imagined Australia : Reflections around the Reciprocal Construction of Identity between Australia and Europe Renata Summo-O'Connell (editor), Berne New York (City) : Peter Lang , 2009 Z1642638 2009 anthology criticism

    'From 'Terra Nullius' to Land of Opportunities and Last Frontier, the European dream has constructed and deconstructed Australia to feed its imagination of new societies. At the same time Australia has over the last two centuries forged and re-invented its own liaisons with Europe arguably to carve out its identity. From the arts to social sciences, to society itself, a complex dynamic has grown between the two continents in ways that invite study and discussion.

    A transnational research group has begun its collective investigation project of which this first volume is the outcome. The book is a substantial multidisciplinary collection of current research and offers critical perspectives on culture, literature and history around themes at the heart of the 'Imagined Australia' project. The essays instigate reflection, discovery and discussion of how reciprocal imagining between Australia and Europe has articulated itself and ways and dimensions in which a relationship between communities, imagined and not, has unfolded.' -- Publisher's blurb

         Berne New York (City) : Peter Lang , 2009     pg. 107-121
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Last amended 20 Dec 2010 12:30:58
107-121 Settler Colonialism and the Formation of Australian National Identity : Praed's 'Bunyip' and Pedley's 'Dot and the Kangaroo'small AustLit logo
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