Differentiation,Conciliation,Multiculture:The Exploration And Presentation Of Australian Identity In Patrick White's Four Novels

Patrick White won Nobel Prize in Literature "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature". White' novels have been the focus of Australian critical attention for 60 years. The White criticism has undergone the stages of the reluctant recognition, canonization and marginalization. The rejection, relatively objective comment or acceptance of White and his novels are to some extent motivated by the underlying ideological differences, evidencing the anxiety of Australian national identity of the critics in different times.The national identity presenting the imaginations of the nation or the community is fluid and relative in essence. Any person or nation need find its position in the axis of the time and the space, and endeavors to keep relative balance during the changes of history and reality. The fluid changes of the national identity actually aren't formed in nature, but reflect the struggling of different powers, existing the scrambling for the discourse power. Literature as a form of knowledge is regarded as an effective mean to get rid of the obsession of the national identity. White made sincere efforts to speculate and explore the construction of Australian identity in his novels. He pointed that only the individual Australian acquires identity of one's own when Australia has the possibility to acquire a national identity.This thesis explores the theme of Australian identity in White's four novels — The Aunt's Story, Voss, The Tree of Man and Riders in the Chariot from the perspective of post-colonial criticism under the theories of "Power-Knowledge" theory and the "Other" theory. The four novels were created in the prevailing of Australian nationalism, reflecting White's contemplation of Australian national identity. In defining and constructing Australian national identity, the relations between the white settlers and the land, Australia and its mother country --- Britain, and the relation between the white settlers and other ethnicities especially the Aborigines are inevitable focuses. This thesis through exploring the three sets of relations mentioned above argues that acknowledgement of differences, reconciliation with the Aborigines, other ethnicities and their cultures, permitting and respecting diversity, multiplicity and multiculture are the better ways suggested by White in his novels for the white settlers to fill the gap between the white consciousness and the local land, properly deal with the relations with the past history and with other ethnicities, construct the unique Australian identity with them together and consequently find the sense of belonging and the spiritual root in this alien and inhospitable land. White and other post-colonial writers gave voices of the Other --- the weak and the marginalized groups through their works. Although White couldn't give the standard answers to the construction of Australian national identity as its fluid, relative and "Power-Knowledge" essence, White enlightened the thoughts of Australian writers later and unfolded a new chapter in Australian literary creative writings.