In spite of the many debates that there have always been about it, there is generally fair consensus about what constitutes a national literature. The subject comes up occasionally on the anniversary of Independence to reflect on the Guyanese nation and, inevitably, on the literature that defines it. Yet, discourses on what is Guyanese literature, and on national literatures further afield, persist with continued interest and can still hold attention in literary criticism.
This is so because there are many different ways of looking at it; it often goes deeper than merely identifying the nationality of a writer and which country he is writing about, to become genuine parts of criticism of that writing. Poet and critic Edward Baugh once engaged in an extensive examination of what is