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Writing About Risky Relatives and What might Have Been The Craft of Historiographic Metafiction PhD Thesis - Volume 1 Exegesis Tim Milfull Creative Writing and Cultural Studies Discipline Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology Submitted in full requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 1 Keywords Historical fiction, historiography, (explicit & implicit) historiographic metafiction, recontextualisation, literary studies, Australian literature, truth in fiction, unreliable narrator, genealogical relationship, narratorial studies, narratorial manipulation, voice, point of view, focalisation, practice-based research, creative writing. 2 Abstract This practice-based research project consists of a 33,000-word novella, “Folly”, and a 50,000-word exegesis that examines the principles of historiographic metafiction (HMF), the recontextualisation of historical figures and scenarios, and other narratological concepts that inform my creative practice. As an emerging sub-genre of historical fiction, HMF is one aspect of a national and international discourse about historical fiction in the fields of literature, history, and politics. Leading theorists discussed below include Linda Hutcheon and Ansgar Nünning, along with the recent critically-acclaimed work of contemporary Australian writers, Richard Flanagan, Kate Grenville, and Louis Nowra. “Folly” traces a number of periods in the lives of fictional versions of the researcher and his eighteenth- century Irish relative, and experiments with concepts of historiographic metafiction, the recontextualisation of historical figures and scenarios, and the act of narratorial manipulation, specifically focalisation, voice, and point of view. The key findings of this research include: identifying the principles and ideas that support writing work of historiographic metafiction; a determination as to the value of recontextualisation of historical figures and scenarios, and narratorial manipulation, in the writing of historiographic metafiction; an account of the challenges facing an emerging writer of historiographic metafiction, and their resulting solutions (where these could be established); and, finally, some possible directions for future research. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Keywords ........................................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Statement of Authorship ................................................................................................................ 6 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................. 9 Research Questions ................................................................................................................................ 10 Research Outputs .................................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 2: Research Framework & Methodology ................................................................ 22 Chapter 3: Literature Review .................................................................................................... 31 Section 1: The Knowing of History in Fiction ............................................................................. 33 Section 2: Writing about Real People .............................................................................................. 39 Section 3: Finding the Right Voice .................................................................................................. 51 Chapter 4: Textual Analysis ....................................................................................................... 62 Section 1: Does Historiographic Metafiction just Deal with the Big Issues? .................... 63 Section 2: Recontextualising Reality and Its Characters ........................................................... 89 Section 3: Telling Stories in Character ......................................................................................... 109 Chapter 5: Reflexive Practice ................................................................................................... 129 Section 1: The Three Faces of Thomas Whaley ....................................................................... 129 Section 2: The Unpredictable Nature of Archival Research ................................................. 139 Section 3: The Reflexive Practitioner ........................................................................................... 142 Section 4: The Creative Practitioner as Scholar ........................................................................ 147 Chapter 6: Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 153 Appendix A – Images related to the story of Thomas Whaley .......................................... 160 Appendix B – Edward Sullivan’s Preface to Tom Whaley’s Memoirs ........................... 162 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 174 4 Figure 1 – Locations of Thomas Whaley's houses in southern France ........................................... 27 Figure 2 – Narrative Structures in “Folly” ............................................................................................ 135 Figure 3 – Page from Sullivan's edited version of Whaley's memoirs .................................. 140 Figure 4 – Timeline of Whaley's Life (1766-1800) ........................................................................ 143 Figure 5 - Whaley's mansion on The Isle of Man ............................................................................ 160 Figure 6 – Whaley's mansion as a hotel after his death in 1850 ..................................................... 160 Figure 7 – Fort Anne Hotel, built as a replica of the original mansion ........................................ 160 Figure 8 – Whaley's Ancestral Home - No. 86, Stephen's Green, Dublin .................................. 161 Figure 9 – Mrs Courtney Whaley (died 1797/99) ............................................................................... 161 5 Statement of Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made. Signature Date 6 Acknowledgements This research could not have been completed without the kind support of the following: Kiki Fung, my Supervisors – Dr Susan Carson & Dr Kari Gislason, my Final Seminar Panel Chair, and panel members, Dr Lesley Hawkes & Dr Clare Archer-Lean, Professor Brad Haseman, Professor Greg Hearn, Jenny Mayes, Kate Simmonds, Julie Gallant, Jessica Hicks, Britta Froehling, Adjunct Professor Helen Yeates, Professor Sharyn Pearce, Dr Vivienne Muller, Dr Jean Burgess, Dr Donna Hancox, Dr Jaz Choi, Eli Koger, the management, staff, and clientele of Dancing Bean Kelvin Grove, Carmen Keates, my colleagues in L221 and L222 and all of my peers at QUT, Toni Bartlett and Ross Watson, Richard Flanagan, Sal Battaglia and Carolyn Stubbin, Claire-Louise and Doug Perrers, my parents, Kathy Webb, Geoff Gibbon, Laurie Scott, and Jack Bauer. 7 Whatever I have seen and observed I shall faithfully detail, without presuming or attempting to misguide the reader; claiming, as a reward of my sincerity, that indulgence which candour and impartiality are always sure to obtain. Should but one young man learn from these sheets some useful lesson, and stop in the career of folly and dissipation; or one of my indulgent friends be induced to believe that my extraordinary levities proceeded, not from a corrupted heart, but an eccentric and exalted imagination and ridiculous pretensions to notoriety, I shall think myself amply repaid for having attempted this publication. Thomas Whaley, Buck Whaley’s Memoirs 8 Chapter 1: Introduction My discovery a few years ago of the memoirs of eighteenth-century Irish dandy, Thomas Whaley, offered some interesting possibilities in terms of writing a historical novel. This hard-cover 360-page version was edited and published by Edward Sullivan in 1906 after he stumbled across the volume in an auction: The work is in all likelihood in the handwriting of an amanuensis, being written throughout in copper-plate of an extremely clear and readable type; and the whole is in an excellent state of preservation. The contents are, however, in a sense written anonymously, the lettered title on the backs of the bound volumes being merely "Travels by T. W.," while on the written title-page within the author describes himself by initials only, and in the body of the work the identity of the principal persons mentioned is sought to be concealed in a like way. (Whaley 1906, v) Sullivan’s edited version of the memoirs is now available online, while the folio- sized, leather-bound originals were stolen from the Library of London sometime before 2006. The memoirs revealed that