AustLit

'This article considers the many short poems published by settlers in British colonies and the United States in the early decades of the nineteenth century in which settlers voiced their concern about the suffering of indigenous peoples in the face of colonisation. Though the indigenous peoples in question were very different from one another, and the nature of colonisation in the various colonies and states by no means identical, this verse shows a remarkable homogeneity of style and tone, being an expression of a common evangelical tradition and a shared fascination with the indigenous Other. The article argues that while these poems were certainly conditioned by an ideology of European superiority, and raise issues of paternalism and agency, they were sincere expressions of outrage and sorrow, and should therefore be accorded more weight than they are usually granted by postcolonial critics.' Source: The author.

'This article tackles the charge of elitism levelled at some Australian writers by Australian critics and suggests that these assessments may be biased because of an over-emphasis on class. This kind of criticism connects elitism with the writers' appropriation of the spiritual for the endorsement of the nation, and either rejects works that treat the spiritual, or it refuses to acknowledge a spiritual element in writing that is accepted for its working-class ethos. Through readings of David Malouf's The Conversation at Curlow Creek and Thomas Keneally's A Family Madness and The Office of Innocence, I question the connection that has been made between high literariness and the symbolic endorsement of the White nation in Australia.' Source: The author.

The publication in 2008 of the English version of Emilio Gabbrielli's (2000) novel Polenta e Goanna and the new re-introduced edition of Rosa Cappiello's Oh Lucky Country in 2009 constitutes something of a landmark in Italian-Australian writing. Cappiello's novel is now the second most-published work by a first generation Italian-Australian writer after Raffaello Carboni's (1855) Eureka Stockade. Although Italians in Australia have been writing about their experiences since the mid 1800s and have produced texts such as those by Salvado (1851), Ercole (1932) and Nibbi (1937),a coherent corpus of Italian-Australian writing has developed only after the post-World War Two migration boom which saw some 360,000 Italian-born migrants entering Australia between 1947 and 1972. While the majority have contributed in some way to Australia's economic development (see Castles et al 1992) only a few hundred have written about their experiences, producing memoirs, (auto)biographies, poetry, theatre and narrative fiction. Although this writing has made relatively little impact on mainstream Australian literary culture and has attracted relatively little attention it deals with political, social and cultural issues and an alternative perspective of Australia from the periphery that makes it worthy of critical attention. [Author's abstract]