The many lives of Douglas Mawson

• Main Author: McEwin, Emma
• Other Authors: Nettelbeck, Amanda, School of Humanities : English and Creative Writing
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: Antarctica; exploration; biography; Commonwealth Bay; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2440/119637

Vol. 1 [Creative work] The many lives of Douglas Mawson -- Vol. 2 [Exegesis] Negotiating biographical boundaries The Many Lives of Douglas Mawson, the first volume of this PhD, is a collection of non-fiction vignettes about the Mawson family. As an exploration of ‗the many lives of Douglas Mawson‘ from his public image as an explorer to his private roles as a husband and father, it considers the making and unmaking of myths surrounding a nationally iconic figure, and explores the impact of Mawson‘s legacy on family lives across generations. The work, which consists of a preface and seven chapters, deals with different themes that open onto Mawson‘s known and lesser-known histories. Inspired by objects and artefacts which have circulated over the years both within the family sphere and in the public domain, each chapter revolves around different material traces of Mawson‘s legacy: public ones, such as his hut which still stands at Commonwealth Bay, and private ones, such as family letters and portraits. -- Negotiating Biographical Boundaries, the second part of this thesis, considers the challenges, the constraints and the myriad decisions and considerations involved when writing about the lives of others. Chapter one is a discussion of Virginia Woolf‘s two essays, ‗The New Biography‘ and ‗The Art of Biography‘ which were pivotal in initiating a conversation about the perils and dilemmas of the genre, in particular the difficulties of how to treat facts and how to navigate the border between withholding and revealing information. In chapters two and three, through an analysis of a number of biographical works, including several by and about Woolf, I consider the ways in which life writers have negotiated the ‗biographical boundaries‘ of genre and form, of public and private, fact and fiction, detachment and involvement, and how far biography has evolved and in some cases departed from the ideals of ‗the new biography‘. In chapter four I look at the genre of ‗fictional biography‘ in which imaginative acts take ...