Week One- and Blog Topics for your Week Two

Hi All,

we are off to a very good start. Our tutorials managed to uncover some really interesting differences between the way the landscape was viewed in the early 19th Century and then in the early 20th Century. Mitchell and Lawrence make a very useful comparison. Mitchell is tied to language and ideas that he has inherited from his utilitarian, picturesque British background (“purling brooks”, “a well kept park”, “still without inhabitants”, “ready to receive the plough”…), while Lawrence’s creative, poetic mind opens his experience to things that are not so easily classified: “invisible beauty”,  “You feel you can’t see…”, “so aboriginal, out of our ken”, “subtle, remote, formless beauty more poignant than anything ever experienced before.” Lawrence’s creative imagination leads him to an appreciation of that which is beyond his immediate, rational understanding. Because of this he allows himself to be touched by the mystery, the magic of events. Mitchell is far too enclosed in his rigid values and terminology to be able to experience the landscape in this way.

Check out the contrast between these two images of landscape by Australian artists, one from early 19th Century (John Glover) the other mid 20th Century (Fred Williams)- double click on all images to expand the view:

 

So here are some Blog Topics for your first week of Blogging:

Creative:

In prose or verse describe a landscape that you know really well and say (after your description) what you think conditions the way you see the world. 

Critical:

Chose any one of the passages that you found most interesting in the handout “The Mountain’s Own Meaning” and say what it is that you find interesting and why. 

Other:

Create a topic of your own, drawing as much as you can on the input from this week’s lecture and tutorial. 

Remember you MUST do at least one peer review, so keep watching the WordPress URL list in LEO to see who is making their appearance. Remember after making a peer review you must copy and paste your review (and the person’s URL) as a new Post in your own blog.

Please seek help from others in the class, or from me, if you need any help with your blogging. Don’t suffer in silence! Please don’t!
MG