We are beginning to break into the secrets of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. There were some wonderful insights in class this week about the relationship of the opening poem to the text of this prophetic book as a whole. War in France and America are, for Blake, mirroring the war described so vividly in…
Month: August 2014
Twentieth Century Literature: Art Gallery Visit: Modernism in Context
We had a fabulous time at the gallery today exploring how Modernism brought such a dramatically new way of seeing, expressing, singing “its” vision of reality. Rodin, Van Gogh, Picasso, Kirchner, Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon broke vehemently with their immediate past and brought a wholly new way of expression. This new way matches almost exactly…
Third Year William Blake- Visionary Imagination Blogs-
What a fabulous swag of 3rd year Blogs in the unit Visionary Imagination, William Blake etc. These are all very talented students showing off their skills in bringing the experience of William Blake to life. This is a very impressive bunch of blogs for the first few weeks of semester. It is an inspiration to…
Australian Literature- Week 5: Late Colonial Writing
Today we explored the writing of a group of impressive women writers who dared to challenge the stereotypes: Ada Cambridge (1844-1926), Louisa Lawson (1848-1920), Barbara Baynton (1857-1929) and Dame Mary Gilmore (1865-1962). All these women wrote passionately about their sense of being trapped within a male-dominated world in which women were treated with little dignity.…
Fabulous Twentieth Century Literature Blogs
Hi all, Your blogs have been coming in thick and fast and there is some awesome material in what you have been posting. I am so pleased to see that Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front has made such a profound impression on many of you. You have confirmed the power of his writing and…
Twentieth Century Literature: Poets of War and Charlie Chaplin.
Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Charlie Chaplin …. a catalogue of names that bring many different responses to war into focus. Rupert Brooke, who never actually saw battle, became the poetic spokesperson for England at the outbreak of war. His sentiments and language are strongly in harmony with the Georgian poets who…
William Blake- Visionary Imagination Week 4
Today we explored Blake’s letters and his deep sense of how his method of engraving provided him with not only a livelihood but with a literal and symbolic means of embodying his life’s purpose. Let’s take each of these focuses separately. Firstly, in his letters we get such a detailed account of the forces that shaped his…
Australian Literature Week 4: The Early Colonial Period
Such a range of diverse talents in the first half of the 19th Century in Australia. Today we looked at Australia’s first international best-selling author Watkin Tench who climbed to fame with his A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1793). This recounts the capture of the Aboriginal “Manly” who eventually settled into being…
Twentieth Century Literature: Erich Maria Remarque
Today we had the fabulous experience of opening our hearts and minds to this wonderful, astonishing book by Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front or, in German Im Westen Nichts Neues (literarily: In the West Nothing New). What is so amazing about this book is the way it presents its central character/ narrator Paul Bäumer…
William Blake and The Visionary Imagination Week 3
We broke new ground today! As well as addressing the question of whether art can transform the world (Blake’s persistent question) – and looking at George Gittoes’ amazing experiments with this in Afghanistan– we tackled two of the hardest poems in the Songs: The “Introduction” to Songs of Experience and “Earth’s Answer” to the Ancient Bard’s invitation to…
Sounding the Sacred- Saturday September 13th Benedictine Monastery Arcadia
This is an event worth putting in your diary. RSVP to michael.griffith@acu.edu.au if you are interested in attending or volunteering as a helper on the day. SoundingTheSacred [Brochure] 6
Australian Literature Week 3- Visit to the NSW Art Gallery!
Wow, what a wonderful turn-out: so many enthusiastic, willing participants for our whirlwind tour of Australian art from earliest colonial times through to Brett Whiteley and beyond… Climaxing in that wonderful painted sculpture by Lin Onus, the fruit-bat bedecked hills hoist: As I said about this image, it comes so close to being a perfect replication…
Twentieth Century Literature Week 2 2014: “The horror! The horror!”
Heart of Darkness is an amazing novel in its modernist writing techniques and in its themes. It was published in 1899 in instalments in Blackwood’s Magazine. Every time I return to it I get a taste of Conrad’s fearless pursuit of the truth, his unwillingness to let outrageous events in the world go unseen. Conrad’s agenda…
The Visionary Imagination Week 2 – William Blake and company
As a man (or woman) is, so he (she) sees: what an arresting idea from William Blake- that how we see the world reflects how we are, what state we are in. We all seek to be open to others and to what is around, we seek to be harmonious inside, integrated, innerly balanced and not…
Australian Literature Week 2: That Dead Man Dance!
Kim Scott is an amazing literary artist: he is able to project a unique life into such an incredible diversity of characters: Chaine, Wabalanginy, Tar… Through the magic of words and music he can bring the differences of these and other characters sharply into focus: His grin became a grimace/ Bobby heard the whales singing.…
Twentieth Century Literature:
Great start to the Twentieth Century in 2014. Lovely to see so many keen, eager, engaged students: seriously! I have a sense you want to learn, find out, create. I hope some of you will actually complete those short poems on the magnolia or the white gum tree. This is a powerful way to understand…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Summer 2023 
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