Universität zu Köln

Antor, Heinz (2020). Insularity, Identity, and Alterity in Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves. Pólemos, 14 (2). pp. 261-276. ISSN 2036-4601

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Abstract

In his novel A Fringe of Leaves (1976), Australian Nobel laureate Patrick White takes up the famous case of the 1836 shipwreck and subsequent survival on an island of Eliza Fraser, a Scottish woman who managed to return to white colonial society after having spent several weeks among a tribe of Aborigines in Queensland. White uses this story for an investigation of human processes of categorization as tools of the construction of notions of identity and alterity in contexts in which social, racial, and gendered otherness collide in the separateness of various insular spaces. In shaping the character of Ellen Roxburgh as Fraser’s fictional equivalent, he chooses a hybrid figure the liminality and the border-crossings of which lend themselves both to an investigation and a critical questioning of strategies of self-constitution dependent on imaginings of negative others. On a more concrete historical level, White thus questions the ideas of race, class, and gender early Australian colonial society was founded on and raises issues that are still of consequence even in the 21st century.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Antor, Heinz h.antor@uni-koeln.de UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-501944
DOI:	10.1515/pol-2020-2017
Journal or Publication Title:	Pólemos
Volume:	14
Number:	2
Page Range:	pp. 261-276
Date:	2020
ISSN:	2036-4601
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 5: Moderne Sprachen und Kulturen > Englisches Seminar I
Subjects:	English
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/50194