AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE

Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introducing Australian Literature
1.2 Problems of Definition
1.3 Matters of Relevance
1.4 Suxtapositions
1.5 Let Us Sum Up
1.6 Questions
1.7 Workscited

1.0 OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this unit is to give you a broad overview of Australian literature and
then introduce you to some of the problems that are part of any attempt to answer the
questions: What is Australian literature? Why is it relevant for the Indian student of
English litemture? What is the nature of its relation to Indian literature?

l,l INTRODUCING AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE

Australian literature is a large body of writing that can include early versions and
English translations of Aboriginal song sequences or folktales, the memoirs, journals
and ballads of early European explorers and settlers. It also includes the more formal
works of literature that followed as writingand publishing established its sway on the
island continefit. Like the literature of any other nation it captures in many ways the
growth and development of Australia into the country that we know today.

It can be said that much of what we can include under the category of Australian
literature from the early phases of its development was not what would be
traditionally considered literature. For example, the oral songs and stories of the
Aboriginal peoples of Australia were passed on orally from generation to generation
without being written. Even when they were recorded in English versions it was done
more with an anthropological intention than a literary one. The idea was to learn
more about the culture and values of the Aboriginal peoples from a scientific point of
view than to study the aesthetic aspects of these creations. Similarly, the records,
memoirs, diaries and journals that are today included under the study of literature
were not always meant for this purpose. They were often the private or official
records of explorers, administrators and settlers. However, these works are important
sources that reveal how the land, circumstances and people of Australia evolved in
the thoughts and imagination of the people who lived there or visited it. They show
how Australian literature came to be written and the early influences on this body of
writing.

The ballads of the convicts and the bush songs belong more to a period when
Australian literature began to be an institution in itself. Periodicals like the Bulletin,
which started publication in 1880, were part of this trend. The ballads and bush
songs, which had earlier been mostly part of the folk tradition, now b e c a m p @of
the literary tradition. Writers began to consciously cultivate and develop the forms,
themes and figures of the oral ballads and bush songs. 'Banjo' Patterson belongs to
this school of writing. 'Waltzing Matilda' a ballad about a swagman - a travelling
farm worker in the Australian outback - has become to many Australians of
European descent, a kind of unofficial national anthem. This is in part because it
An htr@duclionto Australian captures the spirit of surviving in a harsh landscape, the pioneering spirit as well as a
bold attitude to life and the authorities.

Literature in Australia developed and began to take on many other forms such as the
popular short story, the literary version of the fire,side yam. Henry Laws011 and
Barbara Bayntou were prominent short story writers who contributed greatly to the
growth and development of this genre during this formative stage. Their writing
captured features of the growth of the Australian cultural myths of the Bush and its
people. The Erardships and spirit of the European settlers and bush people during the
pioneering days finds expression in their work.

At this early stage of development it was but natural that the writers who were mainly
from alnollg the British settlers would-bring to their writing the values and forms of
the British traditions of literature. In this sense, early Australian literature was
constantly looking over its shoulder at England. This soon developed into a source of
tension as some writers felt that the best direction for Australian literature was to
follow and maintain British traditions of great literature. Others felt that as Australia
was so different from Englar~:! that it should cut the umbilical cord from the inother
couiltry and develop an identity of its own as a nation and this should be reflected in
Australian literature.

Australian history and literature do reveal the many tensions that have gone into the
making of the Australian nation. These are : the tension between the old country of
England, the lnetropolitan c,oIonial centre and the new country of Australia on the
antipodean margins of the British Empire; he tension between the settlers and the
indigenous Aborigines; the tension between early waves of settlers and more recent
immigrants; the tension between the old language, images and literary forms of
British literature and the idiom, images and literary forms taking root in the new
environment of Australia. All these tensions shaped the themes and forms of
Australian literature.

As in much of the rest of the English speaking world, in Australia the first halfof the
twentieth century saw the genre of poetry being more popular and the second half
saw the nov~elrising to prominence. A.D. Hope and Judith Wrigbt are the canonical
figures of Australian poe,try during its heyday. Patrick White, Australia's Nobel Prize
laureate, is probably the best know11 and most taught of Australia's novelists. Their
writing began to move away from both a purely derivative imitation of European
forms as well as a focus on the people and mores of the Rush. Modem Australia, of
the cities began to figure more distinctly in their writing. As the face of the Australian
nation began to change, its literature began to reflect that change. Writers like Kath
Walker, Mudrooroo, Kevin Gilbert and Sally Morgan have brought the poetry, drama
and stories of the Aboriginal peoples to the forefront. There has also been a trend
towards autobiographies, biographies and life-stories gaining more and more
popularity. The multicultural is^^^ that is being promoted at a political level is being
reflected in the diverse voices being heard in the realm of Australian literature.
Today there are more women, Aborigines, irmigrants whose voices join the exciting
confluence that is Australian literature.
-.-
1.2 PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION
Havirig briefly introduced Australian literature is let us look at some of the problems
associated with trying to answer the question: "What is .4ustralian literature?'How
do we define Australian literature? This is not an easy task as different people have
different definitions of it in different contexts. The difficulty of defining 'Australian
literature' is connected to the problems of giving clear simple definitions to the terms
'Australian' and 'literature', both separately and together. 'The reasons why these
difficulties arise <irebecause the rneaning of these terms keep on changing with time Australian Literatul I

and with differer rt contexts.

Many people talce it for granted that literature should be studied with "the 'nation' as
a primary context and framework of referenceW(Bennettand Strauss, 1). One of the
important reascms for this is that the nature and themes of literature are influenced by,
and in turn infiiaence contemporary social and political realities. Since for a long
time, the cate:gary of the 'nation' has been seen as a unit in social, political, cultural
and historica" terms, the study of literature has been linked to it. The study of
literature has, thus become deeply related to the way national identity is created and
presented. The nature of both the 'nation' and the literary storytelling or 'narration'
connected t c ~it, are ~onstantlychanging. The definitions and content of both the
nation and i'cs literature change as social and political conditions change, demanding
similar changes in the way both are presented. This situation is seen in the case of
'Australian literature' as well. In their introduction to The Oxford Literary History of
Australia, the editors Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss make a comment about the
wide and changing range in the presentation of Australia in its literature. According
to them the irnages of the country includes many things. There are images from an
Aboriginal Dreaming describing how the world came into existence according to
Aboriginal folklore. There are the pre-discovery European imaginings of Australia as
Terra Austr~ilisIncognita - an empty and unknown land. There are also experiences
recorded by early settlers, which vary from paradisiacal to purgatorial. More recently
the literature has also revealed shifts rrom the sense of a 'white Australia' or
Australia for Australians of Western Europe to the more recent notion of Australia as
'part of Asia'. Many of these representations operate at times well beyond the
confines of the 'national'. (4-5)

The land now known as Australia had been occupied for several thousands of years
before the British invasion and eventual colonization of the island continent. Often,
that past of theland and the peoples who lived there before the .colonizers came, is
hidden when Australian history and literature is presented as having its 'beginnings'
only in the past two hundred years during which the colonizers have been there. This
way of presenting Australian lzistory and literature was connected to the legal
misrepresentation of the Australian land as being terra nullius - an 'empty land' that
could therefore be claimed and legally possessed by the.colonizers without any
consideration for any earlier claims by Aborigines who lived there before. This kind
of presentation of the civilization, culture and contribution of the Aborigines as not
existing, was a colonial act that for a long time left the Aborigines outside or on the
margins of discussions of Australia as a nation.

This way of thinking about Aborigines is increasingly being challenged by and on

behalf of the Aboriginal people. The Aborigines are telling their own stories and
histories of the Australian nation and making them available for everyone. They are
also laying claims to the legal possession of'the land. Later waves of immigrants from
Southern Europe and Asia, as well as other groups silenced by the powerful colonial
version of Australian identity, history and literature are also producing histories and
literatures. These versions question the traditional presentation of the Australian
nation as a nation created by white colonizers, mostly from Britain. All this is forcing
people to take a new look at what has traditionally been considered 'Australian'
literature and make it include texts and voices it had earlier ignored.

Within traditional 'white' Australian literature itself, the idea of what constituted the
'Australianness' of Australian literature was a point of debate. This became
especially marked as the people of the Australian settler colonies tried to define both
for themselves and others the nature of their political, social, cultural and literary
relationship with the former colonial centre, Britain. At least two positions became
important in the eatly decades of the twentieth century. One argued that truly great
A* in,)oduetibn to Aus~rallan literature had to follow the rules and traditions of the literary models of 13ritish and
European literature, as these were uiliversal and eternal. The other posit ion argued
that the distinctive. features of Australian literature should express the te r.dency to
define 'Australia' without using Britain as a reference point or model. Ia t i Turner
captures the sense of urgency felt at that point in history, to define the Atlstralian
nation as different from Britain through literature, when he quotes Nettie \'almer from
Modem Australian Literature (1924):

Australia was no longer a group of more or less important colonies Ilanging

loosely together.. .on the ample bosom of Britannia; Australia was h :nceforth
Australia. What that name was to mean it lay in the hands of her wril ers,
above all, to discover. (43)

This sense of urgency was however corr~plicatedby the problem of the actual nature
of the difference which Australian literature was supposed to present. If Australia and
its literature were to be defined in terms of their differences with Britain and its
literature, it was not very clear which areas of difference would be focussed upon.
Would it be the real and very ohious differences seen in the land or differences in
the spirit of the people that were more difficult to define and describe? Either way
both sets of differences were constructed and depended on whatever aspect Writers
consciously chose to focus on - the land, the people, their spirit or a combii~ntionof
these three. Another aspect of this whole effort of creating a distinct narional identity
was the two-way pull of wanting to cut loose from Britain while still desiring to
r e t h its respect, interest and recognition, Literature was supposed to perform the
fun;tion of creating national images that projected a national identity. This national
ideutity was marked by a sense of distinction and a sense of national pride in its
diflierences from the British identity. Australia wanted to be more than just another
eo:b~nyor just an imitation of Britain. Ian Turner quotes T.G. Tucker from The
Ccrllivation of Literature in Austmlia (1902):
'
If we ever have an 'Australian' school of literature, it will not be because of
the fauna and flora and geography and idioms of Australia which may be
introduced. The.se make nothing in art. ... It will be because our Australian
atmosphere, our national life, occupations, religious ideas, have inevitably
and unconsciously created in our eyes and hearts and intellects some
difference in our way of regarding things, so that we perceive strength and
beauty and pathos in some new light, and adapt our representation thereto.
I
(43)

As any nation attempts to tell its stories through literature and history, the nature of
the identity that the nation wishes to present defines the standards that decide what is
considered valuable and authentic within those literary and historical representations.
The nature of the target audience of those literary and historical representations will
also determine their tone and content. For example, when the writers, who belonged
to the group of the European settlers, wrote with the audience in the metropolitan
centres of Britain and Europe in mind, for a long time the emphasis was on the exotic
and bizarre in the new land. The inverted seasons where summer peaked in December
anti winter in June, trees that shed their bark instead of their leaves and animals like
the kaugaroo were presented as points of fascinating interest. Later on, when
publication and the primary reading audience shifted to Australia, the emphasis
shifted as well. The focus was on creating a white Australian settler identity through
the rather repetitive literary creation of characters, themes, and situations that were
symbols of that identity. The myths of the Australian Bush and the culture of bush
life developed in a big way during this period. Now the boundaries of the reading
public and the publishing industry have expanded to include the voices and points of
 immigrants a i d women. As a result, there is more diversity in the set of historical and Gustcallan Literature
literary represen tations available in Australia.

Australia - tt e ni ltion with its many cultural, political and social aspects - and
Aust~alianlitmati re - the body of writing that have been used to present some
aspects of th :nati 3n and its sense of identity - have always and continue to be
constantly cllangin y. 'Australian literature' is .thus a term used to categorize a
constantly c hangina body of writing and not any fixed set of books or ideas. There is
no simple a rswer to the question, "What is Australian literature?" Just as there are no
simple ansxrers to tl.4 questions, "What is Australian?'or "What is literature?".
Because of these reaa 7ns it would be harder still to attempt to define 'Australian
literature' f.n tht: tradit onal terms of certain 'characteristic features' or any
'recognised canon' or a et of books that are considered 'great literature'.

This block malces no atttlmpt to do either. Instead, an attempt has been made to
quickly and bn efly discui s some of the changes the term 'Australian literature' has
been used to cr wer within 'he traditional Australian literary studies programmes.
']These prograa rnes have focussed on the more widely studied white Australian
literary canon, as well as ouJside it on texts and ideas that challenge the values and
standards of tjh :white literaqil canon. The traditional canon of Australian literature
mainly include 3 only white w.iiters of European descent. As a result it made it seem
like the only IU natives of importance in the Australian continent were white ones -
with a leaning owards white rnale perspectives. Today that is being challenged as
Aboriginal, w c men ancl immigrant writers assert the importance of their narratives
and literary ctr ations. One example of how this is happening is the way life-stories
have begun tc ) :sin prominence equivalent to that of the novel. This trend was started
by the spate (jf Aboriginal and immigrant biographical and autobiographical writing.
The block sir nl ltaneously attempts to suggest and explain why what has been
included under the category has changed and continues to do so. Since the term
'Australian lite ature' and the standards connected with it are themselves dynamic,
our understcndi ng of it must also bc flexible and open.

1.3
------ ME
WRS OF RELEVANCE . - -----
4
Postcolonial stl) lies in English departments became important in the latter half of the
twentieth centur t as literature departments began to explore the influence of
colonization on I iistory, society, education and writing in the colonized countries.
Postcolonial st1 4 lies have on many occasions tried to show how English studies in the
colonies has bc e I part of a deliberate programme to create colonial subjects who.
would believe n and follow colonial nona~sand vslues. In India, the introtluctisn of
English educat ,a I helped create a class of Indians who could not only help British
officers in thei .I rork of governing India, but who also were aware of and were
expected to be ie Je British values and ideas on culture. Their education in English
thus made the1 p \ =ry useful to the British in maintaining colonization.

This was a par tell that repeated itself in many colonized countries. It was realized
that even afte :ind zpendence, the choice of books and the points of view taught in
English litera lure I bourses helped continue a kind of merit& colonizatiorr. As a result
of questionir g the traditional English literary studies curricula in India and abroad,
they were re~gised1 o include a wider range of writing in English. 'Illis wider range
taken from I nany a )untries was supposed to expose the student of literature to many
different po rnts of \ iew, different standards, values and cultures.

In Australk, the q1lt stionlng of literary studies programmes that focussed only on
British literature p part of the creation of a national identity that wanted to be
different ;uld sepa at :from a British colonial legacy. Historically. the emergence of
An Intrduction to Auslrdian Australian literature as an academic subject (Dale, 134) began with the inclusion of
Literature non-British texts, lectures and postgraduate research starting in t l ~ efield around the
1920s and 1930s. In the 1940s, Adelaide boasted the first full-flt'dged course in
Australian literature. By the 1970s and 1980s a Chair of Austral lan literature had
been created in Sydney. Scholarly journals, literary histories an ;ibibliographies were
being produced as proof of the acceptance of Australian literat1 ire a;; a subject in
academic institutions.

During this period, Australian literature as a subject deve1opf:d in a spirit of trying to

cut loose from the British colonial influence. This was sirnitdr to other attempts at the
national and political level to move away from a British colonial identity. The limits
of this trend were reached by the 1990s. At that time as lin'cs between various
subjects began to be explored, a need was felt for literary litudies to gcb hand in hand
with historical and cultural studies as well as to move be) ond the narrclw limits of a
purely national focus.

Traditional English literature courses in many Indian universities after independence,

too focussed primarily on British literature from Chaucer to Eliot. ,\mencan literature
and Indian writing in English were included within these traditional curricula as
optional papers, mostly at the Masters level. The changes made in 1 he curricula to
include the points of view such as those of postcolonial and femin.;,t studies brought
in a new body of texts and alternate interpretations of traditional te cts.

The introduction of Australian literary studies courses to Indian un versities is part of

the result of the sudden popularity of postcolonial literary studies a universities. At
first, the trend was to include samplings of literature from postcolo aial regions such
as Australia, Canada, Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian'subcont nent under the
term Commonwealth literature or Postcolonial literature. One of thl.: main areas of
similarity among the literatures of all these places was seen as the 131.itish colonial
experience. It was not long before it was pointed out that the exper iewe of
colonization was different in different regions and places. The nati re of British
colonization in Australia and Canada was vastly different from tha t in Africa, India
and the Caribbean. For one thing, Australia and Canada were setti;:r colonies where
people of British origin came to settle down. In that sense their col onial experience
was in many ways more similar to that of the United States of Am' sriccl (which has
never quite called itself as postcolonial).

Furthermore, it was felt that the whole postcolonial studies projecl , while seeming to
bring into>Englishliterary studies courses books and literatures in English that had till
then been outside it, still maintained Britain as the dominant refe-I ::Ice point. At this
point, the tendency was to move away from the broad category of Commonwealth or
Postcolonial literature. Instead English literary studies programmr :3 began to
separately focus on specific areas such as Africa, Canada, Amenc L . Australia and
India while maintaining the postcolonial point of view as one of 1 h<: contexts of
interpretation and criticism. There was also a shift in terms used , m cl it became more
acceptable to use New Literatures in English instead of Commoo wstnlth or
Postcolonial literature.

When Australian literature studies was taken out of the larger fie Id 03 postcolonial
studies where the primary focus was the nature of the response c f Australian
literature to and its questioning of the colonial experience with 1 espec t to Britain, new
angles of study began to emerge. The traditional Australian ca I Jn was itself
questioned on the grounds that it was preoccupied with the ma1 e point of view and
was quite closed to the writing of women, Aborigines and new immigrants. At its
worst, it was seen to simply substitute Henry Lawson and Patr .ckWhite for the study
of Chaucer and Shakespeare in the traditional canon. A study ~ f :Australian literature
that focussed on more local issues such as its relation to Abor ig inal writing or the
writing of women revealed power struggles within Australian literature that
questioned its values in exactly the same way that it cluestioned the values of
traditional British literature.

As the 'global village' - a phrase coined by the communications guru Marshall

McLuhaAecomes a reality, there are opposing trends towards the globalization as
well as localization of studies. The universal and the particular are becornhg subjects
of interest at every level possible. They are not merely seen as opposites but as
connected parts of the same system. Any understanding and questioning of the study
of the globaVuniversal notions of literature requires a comparative understarding of
the specific features of the literal.ures of as many nations as possible. " h i s i:; where
the study af Australian literature gains significance for the student of E ~ ~ g l i s l ~
literature in India. On one level, it is a questioning of the traditional focus on British
literature. On another, it also includes a criticism of the politics and some of the
problems with categories such as Postcolonial and Conmnlon,wealthliterature. Finally,
it inakes us aware of a body of writing that reveals interesting power struggles of it.s
own. In short, the focus has shifted from British English literature to literatures in
English. Just as there is a shift from Ellglish with a capital "'E" to worlti englislles, so
also the study of world literatures in English has become, important !xithin academ.ic
institutions.

The literatures of India and Australia can be compared and contrasted in xndny areas.
Two such areas are the similarities and differences in the pustcolonial situation in
both countries and how both countries deal with cultural diversity. As
discussed before, the idea of postcolonjalisn-~is itself quite controversial and raises
many questions. 'This not a bad thing on its own. Like many other concepts, the idea
of postcolonialisnl often assumes for purposes of argument that the postcolonial
situation is or has been more or less the same everywhere. This is often justified a!;
being for the purpose of opposing the forces of colonialism inore effectively.
However, once colonialism has itself been opposed, it becolnes necessary to find
what aspects of 'postcolonialism' need to be examined and questioned.

It has been argued that as studying aspects of postcolonialism became popular and
fashionable, the field of 'postcolonial' studies began to continue certain negative
trends of colonialism in new ways. This 4s known as neocolonialism. One way this
happens is when the study of postcolotlialism keeps Britain and British colonialism at
the centre of ilirrost ail discussjoxls. Even when they axe being anlalyzed fr0.m otber
critical perspectives, British writers like Shakespeare, who are consiciered the major
writers of British literature and the Engli:;il language, xi:at the centre of most.
arguments. The only difference is that i n a bnditional curricula they were praised and
now they are analyzed from different critical perspectives. While it is crucial to
examine and criticize colonialism and make an analysis of its effects, there is a need
to eventually move away from just discussing the colonizer and.colonised. Also, it is
not a solution to just move from praise to criticism or merely reverse the order of
importance.

Another criticism of some types of postcolonial studies is that their arguments and
discussions seem to assume that colonialism is a historical phase that is over. This
kind of an assumption does not take into consideration aspccts of colonialism that
continue to affect society, culture and politics even today or new fonns of
colonialism that now hold sway. Simplifying the concepts of colonialism as well as
postcolonialism for the purpose of studies and analysis tends to ~xiakeit seem as if
'calonialism' as well as 'postcolonialism' are the same in all contexts and situations.
Distinctions are not made between different degrees to which people in a colonial
An Introduc&n to Australion situation played along with or resisted the colonization. Vijay Mishra and Bob Hodge
Literature point to an instance of this when they comment that many postcolonial theorists, such
as Bill Ashcroft and Helen Tiffin of The Empire Writes Back (1989) fame, "do not
sufficiently recognise the differences between 'settler' colonies such as Australia and
colonies like India which were colonised by a foreign power" (xii). According to
Mishra and Hodge this perpetuates wrong points of view that merely assumes that the
colonizer and the colonized were against each other in all situations.

This is not to argue that one context is more or less truly 'postcolonial'. It is merely
to recognise some of the problems of assuming that the word 'postcolonial' is always
used to refer to the same thing or that the colonized always opposed the colonizer. It
is also to stre<\ the results when these differences are ignored. It would be a mistake
to celebmtc the ways in which white Australian literature opposed Britain without
realizing the role that white Australian literature has played in pushing Aborigines
and their experiences to the background. The same principle applies to the difficult
relations between the better-known canonical texts of Indian writing in English or
texts available in English translation and untranslated writing by Dalits and literature
in the regional languages. The latter have often been ignored or pushed to the
background by the 'postcolonial' framework in English departments which has given -
maximum coverage to texts available in English, most often by expatriate writers.
These are then used to study how the postcolonial spirit is reflected in 'Indian
literature'.

'Multiculturalism' became a popular public and political slogan in Australia from the
1980s when the entry of immigrants from Asia began to change the population profile
of the island continent. Though the first settlers were also culturally a mixed group,
coming mostly from Anglo-Saxon and Irish backgrounds, cultural and racial
differences became mare obvious within the population when in the post World War
years the entry of immigrants from South -Eastern Europe and then later from Asia
began. The policy of multiculturalism became a way to controlling the wide variety
of socio-cultural values and differences that came into contact with one another.

On one hand, this focus on multiculturalism gave a great boost to Aboriginal and
immigrant culture, art and literature. On the other, in the process of creating a space
within the larger framework of Australian culture for so-called alternate cultures and
practices, there was also a tendency to take only some aspects of those cultures -.like
specific art f o h s or food - and 'sell' them as different from 'mainstream Australian
culture', This kind of marketing promotes certain kinds of difference while at the
same time always making clear that it is not quite part of the mainstream. It leads to a
very subtle kind of marginalization. This face of Australian multiculturalism has also
at times drawn attention away from tendencies towards conservative right wing
nationalism and beliefs that Australia should be for 'white' Australians.

In India, questions of cultural pluralism were taken for granted for a long time, as the
main focus of most discussions on culture was on the impact of British colonialism.
The existence of social and cultural divisions, be they religions, caste or class, was
blamed on the British colonial policies of 'divide and rule'. Today, there are
developments in the social and political fields, such as the rise of right-wing versions
of nationalism in India, which are making us think about our claims to cultural
tolerance and pluralism. In this context, looking at the Australian situation may help
throw light by comparison and contrast on how the practice of cultural pluralism has
hidden the many ways in which the voices of women, migrants, dalits and adivasis
have been ignored in social, cultural and political fields, as well as in the area of
literary studies. The diversity of languages in India and the politics of translation and
marketing within an academiclpublishing context wherein Indian writing in English,