Horton, Peter (2012) Tumultuous text: the imagining of Australia through literature, sport and nationalism from colonies to the Federation. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 29 (12). pp. 1669-1686.

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Abstract

Australia is variously characterised as: an 'unlikely paradise of sport', a land of 'muddied clods' and the home of 'Bronzed Aussie Gods'. From 1870 to 1901 Australian writers, particularly those writing in The Bulletin, contributed to the creation of a nationalist tradition and the development of a national persona. The writing of 'visiting' writers, such as Nat Gould and Mark Twain, characterised the image of the emerging nation through the depiction of life in the bush and equestrian themes. The images such authors evoked were proliferated globally and the imaginary of Australia and its culture was mythologised.

Sport in Australia has long been a powerful component of national identity and a source of national pride and efficacy. Sport was a central element in the creation of an initial imagined community and it continues to be germane to the ongoing redefinition of the Australian identity. As Benedict Anderson famously remarked, a nation is, in the first instance, an imagined community and, in the case of Australia, both cultural icons of sport and literature inspired a host of constructions of the earliest image of the nation, its heroes and heroines which now form a core constituent of its assigned and assumed identity.

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