Literary theory is in for an exciting time in Australia. While the Leavisites in the older English departments were wondering what happened to the British ‘Great Tradition’, literary studies went General and Comparative in the 1960s, establishing a fertile context for the development of genuine theoretical developments such as those brought about by the encounter with structuralism, phenomenology and Marxism.

The debates continue to be initiated overseas: structuralism (Barthes, Culler) is on the way out and phenomenological criticism (Iser, Fish) is ascendant, but with a strong challenge from Marxist fronts (Eagleton, Macherey).