- Title
- Establishing literary authority: a two-way process
- Creator
- Parnell, Jo
- Relation
- Humanity Vol. 2010
- Relation
- http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/hss/research/publications/humanity/2010-humanity-journal.html
- Publisher
- University of Newcastle
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2010
- Description
- In the mid twentieth century, thousands of non-offending Anglo-Australian children were placed in Homes and foster ‘care’. The government, churches, and charities of the day saw this as a socially acceptable solution to the problem of what to do with children who were either unwanted or whose parents could not cope. These places were Dickensian, and all these children suffered. I was one of these children; I had no authority over my own life but was subject to the authority of others. As an adult, my experience gives me the authority to write about the damaging childhood. But this counts for nothing if I cannot convey the child’s agony and the horror of the situation to the reader; it is not enough to simply tell my story. Jane Taylor McDonnell says ‘self-revelation without reflection or understanding is merely self-exposure’ and such a work ‘will quickly lose [the reader’s] interest’ (quoted in Phelan 66). So as a writer, through reflection and maturity, I can regain authority of my childhood. How does a writer establish literary authority of the damaging childhood experience? For the writer, establishing literary authority means being able to persuade the reader that the narrative is poetically true, and that what they are reading contains truth, and that the point of view is valid. Vivien Gornick writes: ‘Memoir writing shares with fiction the obligation to lift from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform an event, deliver wisdom’ (quoted in Phelan 66). Writing with authority means gaining the reader’s attention and trust; David McCooey says ‘the production of truth and authority . . . is not so much an exercise in capturing the self as capturing the reader’; and ‘the notion of authority suggests a public domain within which to be authoritative’. He adds that genres that deal with literary and extra-literary forms of authority make the ‘following assumptions: that an individual’s experience is communicable, and that personal experience occurs within a public context. Even the most private and intimate experiences occur within the horizon of public understanding’.
- Subject
- literary authority; foster care; childhood experience; communication
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1044161
- Identifier
- uon:14289
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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