More than a mere story : social and political markers in Australian short fiction of the 1980's

Examines the question: "to what extent and in what ways is the literary imagination conditioned by its social contexts?", concentrating on the 1980s because it was a period of significant social and political change. The thesis argues that this decade was the most significant in Australian history since the 1930s because of the nature and extent of these changes, and investigates how the short stories published during that period reflected and mediated Australian society at that time.