Greek-Australian Literature: Between ‘Majors’

Abstract

This paper discusses the position of Greek-Australian literature as a ‘minor’ between two ‘majors’. The Australian and the Greek (in Greece). It does not however simply attack the ‘major’ literatures for arbitrarily, or unjustly marginalizing Greek-Australian writers, but it attempts to explain why this may be so. In order to do that, the paper critically discusses the writing by first generation Greek-Australians and its development from community oral poetry, to works with a more literary approach, to a few highly ‘textual’ works which have now attained a place in the Australian major literature, albeit not in the Greek as yet. The paper contends that the linguistic and cultural isolation of most Greek-Australians from either the Australian or the Greek ‘centers’, has seriously limited the creation of substantial literary works.