Representations of Irishness in contemporary Australian fiction - DOI: 10.4025/actascilangcult.v30i1.4056

• Autor(a) principal: Barthet, Stella Borg
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: Acta Scientiarum. Language and Culture (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://www.periodicos.uem.br/ojs/index.php/ActaSciLangCult/article/view/4056
• topic: Australian fiction; Irishness; post-colonial literature; Australian fiction; Irishness; post-colonial literature; ficção australiana; qualidade de ser irlandês; literatura pós-colonial

Australian history generates great fervour in intellectual and political circles in present-day Australia, and Ireland’s contribution to the making of the continent is a hotly debated issue. This essay deals with Irishness in contemporary Australian fiction with a 19th century setting. The representations I will be exploring concern the Convict, the Bush-ranger, and the Catholic. I have put these three figures in ascending order, according to the degree of Irishness that they tend to carry with them in contemporary Australian fiction. If we are dealing with a convict; then the character may or may not be Irish; if a bush-ranger, then he is more likely than not to be Irish; if the character is Catholic, then he is certainly Irish.