Ancestral Narratives

Genealogy and family history have experienced an unprecedented boom in the past few decades which has produced a democratic kind of "genealogy from below". However, little critical attention has been paid to this phenomenon. This book explores how ancestral connections are narrated in both history and fiction written by Irish-Australian authors Thomas Keneally and Christopher Koch. It argues that ancestry allows people to imaginatively inhabit the historical period their ancestor lived in, but more importantly, to identify with their ancestor(s). Keneally focuses on the development of national identity through ancestry, while Koch is more concerned with the inheritance of particular constructions of masculinity. Ultimately, this "ancestral identification" can support a transformation of identity and an interrogation of dominant or destructive modes of identification.