Irish-Australian Literature: Ghosts, Genealogy, Tradition

Abstract

Opening with Christos Tsiolkas’s critique of multiculturalism, this essay considers the theory and practice of Irish-Australian literature in relation to questions of ethnicity and transnationalism. By comparing Irish-Australian to Irish-American literature and discussing ways in which theology becomes transposed into anthropology, it engages with problems of how to define such hybrid traditions and how they intersect (or conflict) with national narratives within a larger discursive domain. Australian authors such as Gerald Murnane, Thomas Keneally and Rosa Praed are compared to Irish authors based in London such as Oscar Wilde, with the essay arguing that Irish-Australian literature should be understood as an inherently relational rather than identitarian term. It also considers how Irish-Australian literature impacted upon racial politics across a global axis in the nineteenth century through John Boyle O’Reilly’s friendship with Frederick Douglass.