Could the term "English literature" refer to ANY literature written in the English language, whether it be American or Australian, or is it specific for the literature of England?

English Literature is normally used to refer to the Classics of the English language, so Shakespear etc..

When I earned my bachelor's degree, my minor was in American and English Literature. I know there is French literature and Italian literature and Spanish literature and Greek literature -- classics unique to a country and written by authors from that country. Thus American lit comprises classics (novels, plays, poems) written by Americans such as Dos Passos and Steinbeck and Poe and Twain and Cooper and Irving and Buck and O'Neill and inson and Whitman and on and on for pages. English literature is made up in the same way of classics--by Shakespeare (the prime one!) and Austen and the Bronte sisters and Chaucer and Byron and Wordsworth and Shelley and Thackeray and D!ckens (of course!) and Stoker and on and on for many pages. A purist would separate classics by country and even region.

On the other hand, Wikipedia (like Curlyben) looks at your question more broadly and says this:

English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Thomas Pynchon is American, V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, and Vladimir Nabokov was Russian, but all are considered important writers in the history of English literature. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world in countries originally colonized by the British. In academia, the term often labels departments and programs practicing English studies in secondary and tertiary educational systems. Despite the variety of authors of English literature, the works of William Shakespeare remain paramount throughout the English-speaking world. English literature - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_literature)