Date of Award

2001

Document Type

Thesis - ECU Access Only

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts Honours

Faculty

Faculty of Community Services, Education and Social Sciences

First Supervisor

Dr Julie Goyder

Abstract

Bunty Armitage (working title) explores, within the framework of a young adult novel, the dilemmas and contradictions encountered when a contemporary sixteen year old girl is transported back to the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The eponymous Bunty wins the leading role in a television mini-series to be filmed in Western Australia. The series is based on the life of a pioneering circus woman, Louisa Ireland, and traces her circus travels, with her family, from Albany to Broome on horse-back and by horse-drawn vehicle. Bunty is cast as the young Louisa. The lives of Bunty and Louisa become enmeshed through the agency of an old circus costume which acts as a portal for the time-slips that take Bunty back to Ireland's Circus. This time-slip device allows the lives of Bunty and Louisa to be examined in parallel and creates narrative tension. The use of postcards, letters, images, television scripts and director's notes provides intertextual references and textural depth.

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