A rose by any other name: naming and re-naming biographical figures in Australian historical biofictions

Abstract

Some recent definitions of biographical fiction emphasise its separation from historical fiction and that this distinction is indicated by the use of the protagonist’s real name. In this paper I analyse novels by Australian authors Peter Carey, Steven Carroll, Robert Drewe, Richard Flanagan, Kate Grenville, and Alex Miller, that are based on the lives of figures from the past. Some of these retain the protagonist’s name while others change the name but activate readers’ knowledge of the historical subjects through different means. I argue that the name is not the only indicator in fiction that activates the force of biographical connections and, furthermore, that the insistence on these two components of the definition could exclude from relevant discussion novels based on the lives of real people that shed light on how history is constructed in fiction.