A University of Queensland researcher has written the first known comprehensive study of the teaching of English and Australian literature in Australian universities in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Dr Leigh Dale examined both the history and politics of English teaching from the 1870s to 1960s, and the question of why some authors and some books were selected for study over others.
The result was a PhD and a subsequent book, The English Men: Professing Literature in Australian Universities, to be launched in Brisbane on June 12 as part of the Everyday Wonders popular culture conference.
'People for a long time gave preference to literature written in England, rather than literature written in Australia,' she said.
Dr Dale said that until relatively recently, Australian literature had been considered an 'interesting' topic for sociologists and historians, but not as great writing - 'capital L literature'.
'There was some teaching of Australian texts in the 1920s, but they were taught in spite of the fact that they were Australian, rather than because of it,' she said.
'Some anthologies of Australian poetry were developed but it was a long time - until 1954 - before the first course in Australian literature was offered at an Australian university (Australian National University, Canberra).
'The real problem was that the people who taught courses in English departments did not take Australian literature seriously until the 1970s. As late as the 1960s a senior Melbourne English academic commented that ?good men should not be confined to Australian literature'.'
Dr Dale said the situation had now changed with many people believing that Australian literature was important and relevant to Australia. However, for some people the writings of Shakespeare and Jane Austen would remain more significant than those of Patrick White, partly through a respect for an older culture.
A lecturer in the University's English Department, Dr Dale hopes that her findings will stimulate further academic discussion on the nature of literature selected in University English departments.
Her book, which was seven years in the making, was researched at archives in Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.
It is based on a PhD supervised by Professor Helen Tiffin, awarded in 1993 in the University's English Department, and on subsequent research conducted with support from the University of Southern Queensland (USQ).
The book is one of two in the Association for Australian Studies in Literature (ASAL) series to be launched on Thursday, June 12 at the Carlton Crest Hotel, Brisbane at 5pm.
The second book is David Carter's A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Politics of a Literary Career, jointly hosted by ASAL and the Australian Studies Centre.
Books in the series are available from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at USQ (telephone 076 312 628, World Wide Web address: http://www.adfa.oz.au./asal).
For further information, contact Dr Dale, telephone 07 3365 2164.
