Gandolfo, Enza (1998) My life is over now : a novel and critical commentary. Research Master thesis, Victoria University of Technology.

Abstract

My aim in writing this novel is to give readers a new experience, one that will force them to reassess their views, opinions and beliefs, so that they will alter the way they look at the world - specifically here, how they look at family relationships and conflicts, at women and mothering, and at migrants. This critical component of my thesis focuses on these questions exploring in particular the genre of 'migrant' or 'multicultural' literature. I will argue that this genre classification, developed by literary theorists and not by novelists, can have a negative effect on the way the novels of Italo-Australian women writers including my own novel, are (or are likely to be) read and received. I will be focusing on literary works or works that are aspiring to be literary and not on works of popular fiction in this thesis. My reasons for this are fairly straight forward. First of all, it is a matter of personal interest, and the fact that my novel, My Life is Over Now, is a literary work and not a work of popular fiction. Second, as far as popular fiction goes - romance, crime, to some extent science-fiction, horror - the 'ethnicity' of the author seems to be either of no relevance at all or so important that is it almost always disguised - writers often writing under Anglo pseudonyms. Third, the dynamics of the marketplace, readership and literary theory and criticism operate differently in the area of popular fiction than they do with literary fiction and therefore would require separate analysis.

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