Tolstoy brings us to one of the high points of 19th Century Literature. He explores with such uncompromising depth, issues of profound human concern. What we have explored in Austen, Dickens, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold and others here comes into focus with a white heat. Life and death and the ultimate meaning of all our lives…
Author: michaelgriffith1
12th Night and Shakespeare’s Sonnets
What a wonderful gift to have Professor Barry Spurr gracing us with his extraordinarily insightful lecture on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Barry provided a rich intellectual context for seeing how Shakespeare’s sonnets (and plays), emanating from an author with a middle-class background, were deeply subversive of the hierarchy in England and also of the Italian influence. It…
Silas Marner – George Eliot
This is one of those amazing books that you cannot put down until you reach the end. And why? Because it deals so deeply, persuasively with the essence of what it is to be human: to have a deep abiding need for wholeness, for inner certainty, no matter what the deflections on this path. Silas…
Ben Jonson, Thomas More, Roger Ascham, Thomas Hoby (Castiglione), Philip Sidney, Mary Wroth, Francis Bacon: Humanism…
What a wail of a day we have had coursing through this amazing gallery of Renaissance delights! Ben Jonson’s wonderful poems about his dinner table and the reading he supplies for his guests- and then his savage poem about eating too much “On Guts” : Gut eats all day, and lechers all the night…. Lust…
Art Gallery Visit 2017: Enlightenment, Romanticism, Victorianism
What a fabulous visit we all had to the gallery today. There is nothing better than exploring the dramatic shifts that took place between the 18th and 19th Centuries and then exploring the way art developed up to the beginnings of the 20th Century. But most impressive on this particular tour is the way we are…
King Lear- Final
Reading Shakespeare’s King Lear in the context of Erasmus’ amazing Praise of Folly brings the depth of this play into focus. Erasmus, writing about the state of the world in the 16th Century, could be writing about the world today and Shakespeare really seems to pick up on these insights: “ Now, what else is the whole…
Bujwa: Autumn Dawn Morning Miracle
As we started down the bay track at around 4.30 am the silver gums glowed while the frogs sang loudly through the bush. Down at the bay the mist was thick: it was like looking down into an abyss, but the stillness was immense. And then the bird calls began from across the bay: lyre-birds,…
Charles Dickens Hard Times- Week 6
Hello All, well I am hoping that Dickens’ core message about the ailments plaguing 19thC England and about his vision of a cure, are becoming clearer to you now that we have listened hard to voice of Mt Thleary and have heard what poor Louisa had to endure under her father’s care. Now we begin…
Renaissance Art (at the NSW Gallery), The Shakespeare Room & Shakespeare Resources at Sydney’s State Library
The high point of our “outing” yesterday was seeing “in the flesh” the original first folio edition of Shakespeare’s works. There was a stillness and expectancy in the room as this $5,000,000 treasure was unveiled and positioned on a pillow. With gloves the first pages were turned until we arrived at the wonderful celebratory poem…
Victorianism and Charles Dickens
What a fabulous week to be able to jump in and explore all those amazing connections between the Victorian Age and Sydney our home city: The Queen Victoria Building, Victoria Road, Albert Road, The Palace Gardens… the list goes on. And it is important to stress that Sydney actually grew into a city exactly in…
Autumn Walk to Budjwa Bay (Cowan)
The walk to Budjwa Bay in the early morning is always an incredible delight: the stillness that increases as you move down towards the bay itself, the early morning bird song and the wonderful efflorescence from autumn flowering plants like the Banksia Spinulosa and the Xanthorea Australis (Grass Tree/ Black Boy). Here is the Spinulosa…
Richard III & Sir Walter Ralegh
Shakespeare’s play Richard III while it was set over 100 years before it was performed in the 1590s was a starkly contemporary reflection of the realities of what life and politics must have been like during Shakespeare’s own time. We get a hint of the savage brutality that was part of the reigns of all…
The Historical and Poetic Contexts of Richard III
For this week we explored the world of Elizabeth 1st, Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, and Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus together with Thomas More’s incendiary damnation of Richard III (from which Shakespeare borrowed furiously in order to keep in good with his reigning monarch!). What an amazing world this was: a time of hysterical misogyny where women were…
Jane Austen and the dissolution of Emma’s ego.
Jane Austen’s Emma may on the surface seem to be a book about the privileged middle and upper class society of the late 18th and early 19th Century in England. Yes, on its surface it seems to be a typical novel about the upper-echelons of the English moneyed class. However, a close reading of the drama…
Richard III: Bell Shakespeare- Sydney Opera House
What an amazing performance of Richard III with Kate Mulvany in the lead role. The extraordinary relevance of her presence as Richard was amplified by her physical condition, mirroring Richard’s own adolescent idiopathic scoliosis or curvature of the spine. This is the condition that Kate felt helped to shape Richard’s response to the world in which…
Wisdom from my Doctor
I went for my regular check up this week and met my wonderful but rather ashen-faced doctor who told me he almost didn’t make it in today because a close friend of his had died the day before. I asked him what had happened and he told me that his friend (who was also a…
Shakespeare Plus 2017
Hello All, we now begin our Shakespeare Blogs for 2017. We have had a wonderful launch into a Shakespearean autumn with Bell Shakespeare’s Richard III awaiting us on Wednesday 15th March. As a preamble to that we have explored the context of the European Renaissance and 16th Century England. What a time that was with…
Nineteenth Century Literature 2017
Hello All, We have had a wonderful start to our Autumn semester in Sydney: temperatures are still hovering around the mid twenties but we have had lashings of rain which has kept our burgeoning bush alive and free from the ravages of late summer bush fires! And for me it is just wonderful to be…
Francis Webb- Aquinas Academy- Session 4
Today’s Session covered Francis Webb’s most well known poem (and his own favourite) “Five Days Old” with its celebration of the way a young child can awaken an experience of transformation in an adult. We then turned to Webb’s exploration of the creative power of St Francis of Assisi, the sequence of poems The Canticle. This…
Francis Webb – Seminar 3- Aquinas Academy
Today we explored more deeply Webb’s quest for the “tender voyaging line of truth”, figured so often in something that exists beyond the inner and outer chaos of the present moment. Sometimes it is the sounds of birds (the two words of the cuckoo), sometimes it is a star (echoing the story Webb was told…
Francis Webb Seminar 2: Aquinas Academy
This week we explored the theme suggested by Herbert Read in his introduction to the first edition of Francis Webb’s Collected Poems: “the so tender voyaging line of truth”. This line appears in the poem “Self-Portrait”, part of Webb’s praise of the artist Anthony Sandys (1806-1883) which appears in Webb’s Around Costessey series. Here are some…
Best Blogs from New York
Hello All, We have now finished marking the blogs from our amazing trip to New York, studying the literature and drama of that extraordinary city. All our students had to do daily blogs (on literature and drama… and some chose to blog also on other key events). For nearly all students the most memorable event…
Francis Webb Seminar 1- Aquinas Academy07/02/2017
Today’s session explored the complex background to Francis Webb’s powerful creative imagination. We looked first at “On First Hearing a Cuckoo”, partly inspired by Frederick Delius’ On Hearing the First Cuckoo of Spring. Here is a reading of the poem and the conversation that ensued: The seminar then moved on to explore two of Webb’s early poems…
Seminar Series on Francis Webb
Back on home turf I am now about to present a series of four two-hour seminars on the life and poetry of Francis Webb. The series is called “Poetry and Grace: The Life and Poetry of Francis Webb”. This takes place at the Aquinas Academy in the Rocks, Sydney. This will be a wonderful opportunity…
Updated URLS for New York Team
We are all finally leaving NY and we got a beautiful send off: strong snow falls. Thank you all and goodbye to a great city! URLS for NEW YORK- Anita: https://akeigaldie.wordpress.com/ Anne-Marie: https://annemariedimarco.wordpress.com/ Audrey Bowles: https://barefootfairy42.wordpress.com/ Caitlin: https://caitlyntuckerman.wordpress.com Carly: https://carlysliteratureblog.wordpress.com/category/new-york/ Christina: https://christinarujicica.wordpress.com/ Claire: https://aclairetale.wordpress.com/ Darby: https://darbyelisee.wordpress.com Helen: https://hparminterblog.wordpress.com/ Jade Chambers: https://jadechambers.wordpress.com Jessica: https://therunaboutblog.wordpress.com Kirsten: https://kfed94.wordpress.com Maddison: https://unitedstatesofmaddison.wordpress.com Madeleine: https://maddydoesbroadway.wordpress.com/…
Harlem
Today was one of the richest engagements with American culture. It began with a Gospel service at the Canaan Baptist Church which was one of the most moving experiences I have ever witnessed. The preacher spoke about the difficulties of our own times and invited to the stage one of the leaders of the New…
The Met Breuer: Exhibition of African American artist Kerry James Marshall
After Central Park I strolled across to this wonderful exhibition of one of the most celebrated African American artists who was born in 1955. You can read all about his connections with the Harlem Renaissance here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerry_James_Marshall Deeply educated in classical European art, he has imposed black figures onto traditional painting subjects. This gave a powerful…
Central Park: location for Fitzgerald and Salinger
Our tour guide Eric waxing lyrical over all the many literary connections contained within Central Park. Carousel in motion: Holden’s duck pond: where do the ducks go in winter? Lee (tour guide) is here describing the Angel Fountain: Two Profs very happy with the outcome of this whole tour: 1= AssProf; 2=2BProff
Day 4: Part 1- The MET
The MET began with an introduction to American Art through the iconic work of the early 20th Century Artist Thomas Benton whose amazing panoramic America Today fills a whole room. The painting captures America at the start of the Great Depression, shortly after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. America was in the throes of questioning/celebrating…
A Bronx Tale: Lonacre Theatre, Broadway New York, Manhattan
We were all nearly jumping out of our seats with this rocking performance of a film that we had studied. All were asking the question: how can you turn a graphic, violent story into a musical? Would anything be lost in the process? Outside the theatre the advertising banners were promoting it as a blend…
Day Three- MOMA
Our day began with a wonderful short introduction to the literary landscape of New York from the perspective of New Yorker Professor Nicholas Birns, an actual American specialist in Australian Literature and author of Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead Sydney University Press.Nicholas is now on the academic staff of NYU New York University. Nicholas has…
Jittney: Broadway- August Wilson
We went to see this amazing play by August Wilson at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Here is the stage set that greeted us on entry into the theatre; a set that takes you straight into the cityscape of Harlem, very reminiscent of the paintings of Romare Beardon– who was an almost exact contemporary of August…
Walk to Brooklyn Bridge and Times Square: Literary & Dramatic Connections
Another great day of walking with so much valuable input from our New York literary guides. Today we headed first to Brooklyn and then on to Midtown’s Times Square. Our guide filled us in with some interesting historical background to this area of New York: And here is the fabulous Bridge about which Hart Crane…
First Night with our group on Broadway: The Waitress!
Students were incredibly excited to be going to Broadway tonight- and through Times Square at night. It was indeed an exciting albeit confronting journey through nitetime NY to the centre of the entertainment industry. First up here is yours truly and James in the queue waiting for the opening of Waitress- with 32 queued behind…
Literary Tours through Greenwich and East Village New York: what an amazing day!
Introduction by our friendly, highly experienced tour guide! Washington Square was our first port of call. This is the place where Henry James was born, where he lived and from which he composed an early masterpiece which we are studying Washington Square. It is a wonderful novel that champions women’s intelligence and shows the poverty of…
New York: here we are! ACU students from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne
Up up and away! Students from 3 ACU campuses (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) met in Los Angeles to head together to New York to study “The Literature and Drama of New York” which James Marland and myself are teaching this year and in subsequent years if all goes to plan: We arrived after a 24…
Message for imminent New Yorkers!
NasHI All, imminent New Yorkers. It will be really good if we could create a complete list of your WordPress URLs BEFORE we depart. Please create your WordPress Account now at https://wordpress.com/create/ Please send through your URL to Michael.griffith@acu.edu.au and I will build the list. If you need help at any time you can ring…
New York, New York
We are off to New York very soon to study the Literature and Drama of New York: 30 students + 3 staff: what a blast! We have been working all week on the poetry, fiction and drama of New York and will arrive at JFK thoroughly soaked in the language and experience of those who…
Top ePortfolios for Twentieth Century Literature 2016: Extraordinary Explorations into images of Destruction and Creation!
Click on any of these names to reveal some fabulous blogging work in Literature Lalee Manizha Caitlyn Tuckerman Melissa Fleck Daniel Mangabat Daniel Ognovski Anne-Marie Dimarco Morgan Bailey
Top ePortfolios for The Visionary Imagination in 2016: what an inspiring group of visionary bloggers!
Audrey Bowles Caitlyn Tuckerman Morgan Bailey David McGettigan
Michael Griffith: Medieval Mystics- Meditation: the Recipe for Peace
Hello All, I was privileged to be able to organize with the Al Ghazzali Centre in Sydney a Symposium on the theme of Love & Intellect: A Recipe for Peace. We had Islamic speakers Imam Afroz Ali and Ustadh Feraidoon who developed this theme. I gave a talk chiefly on the Mysticism of Hildegard of…
Love & Intellect: Recipe for Peace
Come and be stimulated by presentations and discussions on the mysticism of Rumi, St John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Hadewijch of Antwerp and others in this exciting interfaith presentation by the Al Ghazzali Centre, ACU and ACU’s SLA (The Sacred in Literature and the Arts Group). These mystical writers have a vitally important message for…
Brian Friel Faith Healer
This was an amazing play that really does take us into the heart of everything that the twentieth century was about. T.S. Eliot speaks about modern life as one where we are all “distracted from distraction by distraction”. We have seen how Gerard Manley Hopkins challenges the destructiveness, the distractedness of his times as, in…
BlakeanPineappleCoconutsBBsBlakesoniansBlakettes….
Our Blakean students today created some wonderful drama pieces that captured the life, times and contemporary significance of William Blake. There were dramatizations of some of his greatest poems (e.g “London”) with animations of overcrowded London streets; there were scenes of contemporary life emphasizing the fact that we spend too much time on chasing the dollar…
Nation, Race and Language: “Wherever I hang my knickers – that’s my home.”
Today we explored a range of immigrant writers who either embraced the English Language totally (such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka), or those who enjoyed flaunting the creative powers of their own appropriation of English (such as Louise Bennett and Grace Nichols), finally to those such as M.Nourbese Philip who seemed to lament the loss…
Remembering Babylon- David Malouf
Whether this is Jerusalem or Babylon we know not: William Blake The Four Zoas. With this epigraph from William Blake, David Malouf challenges us to consider whether the colonial Australian world that he evokes in this beautiful novel is a place in which harmony might evolve, or in which chaos and lamentation might descend. It is…
George Orwell: The Creation of an Orwellian Backbone as a Way towards Purifying the Human Condition.
George Orwell who experienced the horrors of imperial exploitation when working as a police officer in Burma began then to think of ways in which he could challenge corruption in politics, indeed in all human affairs, using his gift of language. Language for Orwell was man’s most creative as well as his most destructive tool.…
Patrick White’s Gift of Reconciliation
Patrick White had the extraordinary insight, back in 1961 to write about the amazing creativity inherent in his Aboriginal character Alf Dubbo who plays a leading role in the novel Riders in the Chariot. The novel won the Miles Franklin award in that year and then in 1965 won the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. Patrick White’s…
Jerusalem Bay- Taffy’s Lookout: Spring Day
This walk begins at Cowan Station and is part of The Great North Walk for the first half. The wildflowers this season have been the best I have ever seen. The walk down to Jerusalem Bay is nothing short of miraculous. Here at the start are a stand of 2 metre high Isopogons (Anethafolius). These…
Francis Webb Seminar Series Feb 2017
Please find advance warning of a Francis Webb Poetry Seminar Series Running in Feb 2017 Click here for PDF: 2017-mg-francis-webb-gods-fool Please find advance warning of a Francis Webb Poetry Seminar Series Running in Feb 2017
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025 
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