Peter Carey’s Challenge to a ‘Christian’ Australia in Oscar and Lucinda
Issue: Vol 29 No. 3 (2016)
Journal: Journal for the Academic Study of Religion
Subject Areas: Religious Studies Buddhist Studies Islamic Studies Biblical Studies
DOI: 10.1558/jasr.30897
Abstract:
Throughout Australia’s European history, its political leaders have invoked a construction of Australian identity which contends that Australia is ‘a Christian country’: a claim made as recently as November 2014 by Pauline Hanson in her speech to re-launch her One Nation party. Published in 1988, Carey’s novel Oscar and Lucinda was seen by many as his response to Australia’s bicentenary, and it can be read as a challenge to several of the mainstays used in dominant constructions of ideal Australian life, its ‘Christian heritage’ included. In this article, therefore, I will explore the novel’s critique of the Anglican Church more specifically, and Christianity more generally, which it employs as a means of challenging the myth of Australia as a Christian nation. This discussion will call upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Benedict Anderson, as well as Lyn Spillman and Kate Mitchell who examine commemoration and literature as productions of cultural memory.
Author: James Dahlstrom
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