The Role of Oral History Vs. Written History in The Works of Sally Morgan And Kate Grenville
Keywords:
oral history, written history, Australian literature, Sally Morgan, Kate Grenville, Indigenous identity, historiography, cultural memoryAbstract
This study examines the role of oral history and written history in shaping historical representation within Australian literature, with particular focus on Sally Morgan’s My Place and Kate Grenville’s The Secret River. It investigates how these two narrative modes function as distinct epistemological frameworks that influence the construction of identity, memory, and historical truth. The analysis reveals that Morgan foregrounds oral testimony as a means of recovering marginalised Indigenous voices and reconstructing suppressed family histories, while Grenville engages with written archival records and employs imaginative reconstruction to address their silences. By adopting a qualitative and comparative approach, the study highlights how both authors challenge the authority of conventional historiography and contribute to a more inclusive understanding of Australia’s colonial past. The findings demonstrate that the integration of oral and written histories is essential for addressing the limitations of each mode and for producing nuanced, multidimensional narratives of history.
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