1890s Romanticism: Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson and the Construction of a National Cultural Imaginary

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article re-examines the nationalist poetry published by canonical Australian poets A. B. “Banjo” Paterson and Henry Lawson in the influential journal the Bulletin from 1889 to 1900 as a delayed, settler-colonial instance of Romantic ballad revival. Bush ballads were centrally involved in both the poetic and media dynamics characteristic of earlier Romantic movements. Romanticism therefore provides a new framework to assess one myth of Australian settler-cultural nationalism (naturalized by certain groups within Australian literary studies) that Paterson and Lawson are representative of an organic and distinctly white Australian poetic tradition. This article argues that nationalist ballads used Romantic modes to fabricate a deep white historicity in the bush, establishing a folkloric tradition in a situation with neither an evident folk nor indeed any artifactual lore.