Refugee Tales (UK) Meets Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: An Australian’s Historical Perspective

Abstract

There are and have been Australian voices strongly raised against the now long-running mandatory detention of refugee boat arrivals to Australian waters. Yet just as Indigenous Australians exist as part of an impersonal category for most Settler Australians, the absence of any widespread community protest against the brutal treatment of boat arrivals has in part fed off the lack of a broader cultural and historical frame within which to tell and hear individual refugee stories. These victims occupy a narrative space whose moral dimensions are blanked out, as an integral part of their maltreatment. For those who want change, pressing questions arise. What kind of stories could let these refugees be admitted to the category ‘Australian,’ in a more inclusive version of our actual and potential inhabitants? In this context, might Australia find a version of the model of national community that England has long drawn from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales?