AustLit

'In this extensive and thought-provoking collection, Bruce King clearly establishes the scope of coverage signalled in his title. His introduction outlines the collection’s trajectory as an historical mapping of the discipline: the use of “many names [to describe] a developing body of literature is itself significant”, suggesting that these essays and reviews “can be read as a story about how a major area of literary study has developed and the political and cultural changes it represents” (3). The writings in this volume constitute a considerable achievement over many decades of work, mapping the shifts in disciplinary coverage matched by these shifts in labels, and they are diverse in their function as reviews, essays and direct textual analyses. While this material is not “new”, it nonetheless offers a fresh look at “how newness enters the world” (Bhabha 1994, 212). (Introduction)