Review of Authority and Influence: A ustralian Literary Criticism 1950-2000, edited by Delys Bird, Robert Dixon, and Christopher Lee

Abstract

In a recent issue of the UK journal Australian Studies, David Callahan notes a shift towards foregrounding 'questions of hermeneutics and first principles' in Australian academic life, and away from a consideration of specific cases. The publication of Authority and Influence is one example of that metadiscursive preoccupation. More than this, of course, its arrival poses interesting questions about how, and indeed whether, those metadiscourses of Australian literary criticism are themselves shifting. The first general history of criticism published since 1974 (after Brian Kiernan's Criticism), this volume declares its intention to 'refocus attention on the archive' and to encourage the systematic study of Australian literary criticism in universities and elsewhere.