Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/31925
Title: Facing the Minotaur in the Australian Labyrinth: Politics and the Personal in Requiem for a Beast
Contributor(s): Hale, Elizabeth  (author)orcid 
Publication Date: 2020-10-12
Open Access: Yes
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/31925
Open Access Link: https://doi.org/10.33675/2021-82537874Open Access Link
Abstract: 

Requiem for a Beast: A Work for Image, Word and Music by Matt Ottley (2007) is an Australian mixed-media text for young adults that intertwines the myth of Theseus with the story of a boy's coming of age in the Australian Outback. Told through paintings, fragments of graphic novel, diary entry, spoken memories, dreams, and song cycle, it takes young readers into a series of physical, emotional, and historical labyrinths. Physically, the labyrinths appear in the Australian landscape, a place of sweeping beauty but also hot, bare, and threatening (to non-Indigenous people). Emotionally, the labyrinths appear in the boy's backstory: a troubled childhood and a broken relationship with his father. They also appear in the complex history of Australian colonization and the damage done to the Indigenous peoples of the country by colonial settlers and governments. As the boy goes into those labyrinths, he becomes a modern Theseus. He encounters a Minotaur formed by generations of trauma: the trauma visited on the Australian Aborigines and the generational guilt of settlers' descendants. The boy (who as an everyman figure remains unnamed in the book) must face the Minotaur and conquer it in order to begin the process of healing the wounds of the past: his own, his father's, and those of the Aboriginal figures in the book - an elderly Bundjalung woman who was stolen from her parents as a child (through a system of institutionalized racism) and an Aboriginal teenager who was killed in a moment of casual cruelty by a friend of the boy's father. The connected stories of different generations of White and Black Australians interweave with the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur to form a politically charged and deeply felt work, showing the power of young adult fiction to take on difficult subjects and to help young readers negotiate labyrinths of their own.

Publication Type: Book Chapter
Source of Publication: Chasing Mythical Beasts: The Reception of Ancient Monsters in Children's and Young Adults' Culture, p. 157-174
Publisher: Universitätsverlag Winter
Place of Publication: Heidelberg, Germany
ISBN: 9783825378745
9783825369958
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 200502 Australian Literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Literature)
200510 Latin and Classical Greek Literature
200501 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Literature
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 470502 Australian literature (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature)
470513 Latin and classical Greek literature
450109 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature, journalism and professional writing
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 950201 Communication Across Languages and Culture
970116 Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society
950503 Understanding Australia's Past
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 130201 Communication across languages and culture
130703 Understanding Australia’s past
280114 Expanding knowledge in Indigenous studies
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages: E12 Bundjalung
HERDC Category Description: B1 Chapter in a Scholarly Book
Series Name: Studien zur europäischen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur/Studies in European Children's and Young Adult Literature
Series Number : 8
Editor: Editor(s): Katarzyna Marciniak
Appears in Collections:Book Chapter
School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

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