Tác giả: Catherine Eliza Somerville Stow

Catherine Eliza Somerville Stow, more widely recognized by her pen name K. Langloh Parker, was a pivotal figure in the preservation and narration of Indigenous Australian folklore and culture. Born in Australia in late 1856, she developed an abiding interest in the lives and stories of the Aboriginal people of the Urrbrae region. Stow lived much of her life on a pastoral station in New South Wales, which became the crucible for her literary work. Her close contact with the Indigenous people allowed her a unique insight into their traditions and the oral histories that threaded through their communities. This proximity and Stow”s empathetic disposition informed her principal work, “Australian Legendary Tales” (1896), an anthology lauded for its authentic and respectful retelling of Aboriginal stories, thus conserving them for posterity. The book was a pioneering attempt to bridge the cultures, earning Stow acknowledgment as an essential recorder of Indigenous Australian mythology and an early ethnographic writer. Her literary style is marked by a narrative sincerity and vivid depiction of the Dreamtime tales, expressed in a way that is accessible to both the interested ethnologist and the general reader. Although acclaims for Stow”s work have been historically marred by the Eurocentric and paternalistic perspectives of her era, contemporary assessments regard her with a nuanced understanding of her efforts to faithfully document the rich oral traditions of the Aboriginal peoples she admired.