帕特里克·怀特与当代澳大利亚文学批评

The publication of Simon During’s book Patrick White(1996) indicates that Australia’s only Nobel laureate continues to generate controversies in contemporary Australian literary criticism. This essay argues that such critiques arose in part as a result of attempts on the part of various neo-Marxist cultural studies programs in the 1980s to reevaluate the Australian canon to begin with. In the 1990s these subversive author studies turned in the hands of literary institutional studies into massive subversive reexaminations of the mid-20th century Australian context in which White had written. It is contended that, towards the end of the last century, During’s criticism of White should also be understood as a renewed gesture of the leftists in their positioning in the Australian culture wars of which the Patrick White debate formed a part. Thanks to the power afforded him by the Nobel Prize, White’s status as one of Australia’s greatest writers was further consolidated after During’s departure for the United States.