AustLit

In mapping the development of Australian literary studies as an object of scholarly endeavour, Gelder poses the questions 'why are we still producing a form of literary studies which seems to sanction' the narrow perspective of an Australian national literature and 'when will literary nationalism be supplanted by, at the very least, something akin to literary regionalism'? Gelder refers particularly to The Oxford Literary History of Australia (1998), but comments also on other works that have attempted to map the national literature.