Research Catalog

Title

Shameful autobiographies : shame in contemporary Australian autobiographies and culture / Rosamund Dalziell.

Author

Dalziell, Rosamund

Publication

Carlton South, Vic., Australia : Melbourne University Press, 1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 302 p.; 22 cm.

Summary

Writing autobiography is a risky business. What is shameful can be inadvertently rather than deliberately revealed. Yet reading autobiography can also be risky, as it may lead to the confrontation of shame in ourselves. Perhaps it is this element of risk, together with the magnetism of another person's confession of shameful experience, that make us such avid readers of autobiography. Rosamund Dalziell proposes that shame is the driving force in many Australian autobiographies. Indeed, she suggests that the representation of shame is fundamental to the autobiographical process. Shame seeks concealment - and this, she argues, explains both why this fascinating link has not before been explored and why, when it is pointed out, we immediately know it to be authentic. Shameful Autobiographies looks at pervasive patterns of shame in the autobiographies of such leading Australian writers as Germaine Greer, Sally Morgan, Bernard Smith, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Morris Lurie, Ruby Langford Ginibi and Robert Dessaix. In so doing it establishes the centrality of shame to problems of Australian identity and to current political debate - for instance, it is shame that fuels angry repudiations of the so-called 'black armband' view of history.

Subject

• Lockwood, Douglas
• Perkins, Charles, 1936-2000
• Ginibi, Ruby Langford, 1934-2011
• Gilbert, Kevin, 1933-1993
• Morgan, Sally, 1951 January 18-
• Simon, Ella, 1902-1981
• Tucker, Margaret, 1904-1996
• 1900-1999
• Autobiography
• National characteristics, Australian
• Shame > Australia
• Authors, Australian > 20th century > Biography > History and criticism
• Shame in literature
• Autobiographies as Topic

Genre/Form

• Autobiographies
• Biographies
• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• Autobiography.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-293) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction -- 1. The shaming of Australian culture : resisting the myth of British superiority -- 2. Original shame : autobiographies of illegitimacy -- 3. Racist shame : Aboriginal autobiographies -- 4. Immigrant shame : 'not feeling dinkum' -- 5. Mapping shame -- 6. Autobiographical shame -- Epilogue.

ISBN

0522848605

LCCN

^^^00364452^

OCLC

• 42993969
• SCSB-11284717

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library