Tracing practice-led research to locate a ‘nature' in remembering Babylon

Abstract

David Malouf's novel Remembering Babylon did not, like Athena, spring fully formed from the head of Zeus. It is equally doubtful that the novel was inspired by some mystic muse. Malouf seems to have employed the scholarly methodology of practice-led research to write Remembering Babylon, gathering information from historical and literary sources, selecting and rejecting specific elements from these sources, then subjecting what he had chosen to his creative imagination. In the afterword, Malouf acknowledges the historical Gemmy Morrell's name and his actual words as the ‘seed of this fiction’ but ‘otherwise this novel has no origin in fact.'