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Voicing the dead: Employing ficto-critical wordscapes to enliven historical fiction for young adults
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Voicing the dead: Employing ficto-critical wordscapes to enliven historical fiction for young adults

Gary Crew
USC Research Conference, 2014 (Sunshine Coast, Australia, 14-Jul-2014–18-Jul-2014)
University of the Sunshine Coast
2014
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Abstract

Performing Arts and Creative Writing
This paper addresses the issues raised by comparing Santayana's warning that 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it' (1905; The Life of Reason) with the future hopes of contemporary teenager Ramon: 'I want my kids to have a better life than I did. I'd like them to grow up in a more compassionate society'. Pollock (2000; Real Boys Voices). The conundrum raised by these quotations is that since Australia lacks a substantial body of historical writing about its own past and peoples (Indigenous or otherwise) which might appeal to a youth readership, how are we to avoid repeating the horrors of the past? Crew will suggest that perhaps one answer lies in the creation of a new and engaging historical genre for youth which applies emergent ficto-critical stylistics to the concepts of the Australian Historian, Professor Greg Denning (1994; Mr Bligh's Bad Language), who advocates, 'In writing history…I have always found that I needed to give a voice to the dead. I couldn't give them life, of course, but I could give them a voice. And I could give the living an understanding of the past for the present…' Denning, G. (2001) A Library Sailor. Limina Vol 7

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