Oscar Wilde was undoubtedly an earlier version of Mick Jagger in his daring to confront a staid middle class with outrageous dress and demeanour. As has been noted: “The Rolling Stones were in the vanguard of the British Invasion of bands that became popular in the US in 1964–65. At first noted for their longish hair as much…
Saturday Morning Dawn Walk Down to Berowra Creek
My brother and I set off at the crack of dawn on a densely misty morning from Berowra Heights down to Berowra Creek, not far from Berowra Waters. The view from the top of the ridge, down across the gullies towards Crosslands is magic: It was dark almost all the way down, but we followed…
Falstaff and Prince Hal
Falstaff is one of those amazing characters who, although from many points of view, is just a “bad” man, from other points of view he is the life of the party! Intelligent, witty, full of good humour, full of appreciation of the good things in life and scathing about those things that drive ambition: “honour”,…
Clemente/Catalyst Students Go the NSW Art Gallery: The Links between Literature and Art!
One of the most exciting things I do several times each year is conduct literature students to the NSW Art Gallery to explore the ways in which paintings and sculptures can hugely expand our understanding of the way literature communicates meaning. One of my students (thank you Joey!) right at the start of our tour…
Clemente/ Catalyst students visit NSW State Library and Shakespeare Room
What a great introduction to our imminent study of/ participation in a production of scenes from Shakespeare’s As You Like It! Thank you Julie for your wonderful tour of the resources in the Mitchell Library, the Dixon Library and the Shakespeare Room itself! We were taken through the Mitchell (fabulous space for letting the creative spirit soar!)…
Leo Tolstoy and the Search for Truth
Tolstoy was passionate about uncovering those aspects of a human being in society that prevented him or her making contact with something true or real. He saw people in the law courts, in families acting out a kind of public drama which put each person centre-stage, totally ignorant of the other. It was like a…
Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Henry IV
Today we had some fabulous tutorials exploring the kind of language Shakespeare uses in the opening scenes of Henry IV. Here is the king trying to bind together his empire with a proposal that all the civil warmongering British unite in one force and go on a crusade to rescue Jerusalem from the “infidels”. This is such…
What Happens When Prose Turns to Drama: Clemente/ Catalyst Week 7
We had an intensive afternoon exploring the characteristics of Henry Lawson’s Prose (both journalism and short story). He was such an innovator in the way he managed with so few words to evoke so much, especially in the area of people’s feelings. He was also the writer who brought the life of Australian everyday usage…
Top Blogs- First Cull Autumn 2015
My students are performing miracles with their blogs. They are grasping and extending the content of the literature they are studying in the most creative ways. Poems and prose creations -giving expression to their own experience- are being grounded on traditional models from Shakespeare through to Charles Dickens & Matthew Arnold. Along with this they are…
Thomas Hardy’s Clym Yeobright: Madman? Heretic? or Blasphemer?
In the last two pages of Return of the Native Hardy alludes to the fact that Clym preaching to the “heathmen and women” on Rainbarrow, just before his 33rd birthday echoes Jesus’s work on the Sermon on the Mount. Is this how Hardy wants us to see Clym, as a saviour to the unenlightened rustics of…
Hakea Sericea – Seed Cobs- Galston
After the morning mist has wreathed its diaphanous skirt over the landscape its passing is registered on every branch, leaf and seed. Here the Hakea Sericea with its testicular seed capsules points the way down to the Galston Creek: Left this one out from the previous post!
Sunday Morning Bush Bash
Made it this morning to the best spot overlooking the Hawkesbury Sandstone Plateau- just before dawn: Lot’s of autumnal wildflowers out, most spectacular this Banksia Collina, abundant all along the ridge tops: And the moist autumnal weather brings out a profusion of spider webs: Near the end of the walk ( around a 12 Km…
Thomas Carlyle’s Wonderful Words Celebrating the Continuing Importance of the Printed Word
At the State Library Today, we also genuflected in front of these amazing words from that extraordinary 19th Century wordsmith, the historian Charles (to whom Dickens dedicated his Hard Times). To anyone who still reads and benefits from the written word, these words carved in Sydney sandstone inside the vestibule to the Mitchell Library will have a…
Art in the Age of Shakespeare: A Distant Mirror over 450 Years Ago!
Thank you all for your keen participation in today’s visit to the Renaissance section of the NSW Art Gallery. We all got a very good taste of the range of art work from the period and the connections of all this work to Shakespeare’s imagination. Most powerfully this painting by Jacques Blanchard Mars and the Vestal…
The Shakespeare Room: State Library of NSW- into the bosom of Shakespeareana.
We visited the Shakespeare Room in the State Library today. This room is a wonderful expression of how much Shakespeare has meant to the Australian colony since the time of Captain Cook. One of the first plays ever to be produced in Sydney was in fact Henry IV with a complete convict cast! When you get to…
Tim Winton, Kate Chopin, Ernest Hemingway- a crowd of rat-bags or visionaries?
What a question I have posed? I think all three authors push the boundaries of convention, but they do so in a way that alerts the reader to the restrictiveness of the way most of us go about our lives. In Tim Winton’s “The Sand” the sand dunes are perhaps the major character, the one…
Thomas Hardy: Searching for Ballast in a Crazy World!
Egdon Heath (with Rainbarrow on the right) photographed May 2014- on location (Click to enlarge) Thomas Hardy, when describing Egdon Heath, the physical setting for his novel Return of the Native, describes it as “ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New.” For Hardy this was clearly a profound reality: experience of…
Shakespeare’s 451st Birthday Party is on April 23rd: Get Ready for it!
Check out the big party at the Shakespeare Folger Library! And here is Anthony Burgess’s novel about Shakespeare’s love life.
Prose versus Poetry- what are the key differences- if any?
We tackled this question in our class this week. Here is a very simple way of showing the differences. We drew attention to these differences initially with special reference to Shakespeare. We have all just been to see As You Like It with John Bell in a leading role. We were trying to identify why and…
Easter Sunday Bush Walk to Jerusalem Bay
Blessed with the sunshine on this Easter Sunday, we went down to Jerusalem Bay through the magnificent changing landscape of a hanging swamp full of flowering tee trees, through the wet sclerophyll with pink croweas and nearly flowering darwinias. Then the track descends through rain forest with high Turpentine and coachwood trees. Reaching the “nose”…
Henry Lawson’s “Sweeney” and Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” at Mission Australia
What a fantastic session we had this week with Henry Lawson and Robert Frost. Both these poets display such a deep insight into the human condition but do it in such dramatically different ways. …
The Invention of the Wrist Watch: The Work of the Devil?
In 1853 (the year that Dickens published Hard Times and Matthew Arnold published “The Scholar Gypsy” the Boston Watch Company was formed. This was the first company to begin developing that device that keeps us all chained to linear clock time, intensifying our stress and anxiety levels and robbing us of the childhood capacity to ignore…
As You Like It: Will Shakespeare…. what is it that we (are) like?
What a fantastic performance by the Bell Shakespeare Company at the Opera House Drama Theatre. Around 60 students from ACU and another 20 or so from the Clemente program witnessed this great event. Thank you all for attending. Shakespeare’s As You Like It is a play that appeals above all to our sense of order, our…
Queen Victoria’s Railway Carriage and Charles Dickens’ Challenge!
This is where Queen Victoria sat in her carriage- a gold plated dunny, with decor matching the carriage as a whole: It is no wonder that Dickens and artists concerned with the “Condition of England” were disturbed at the discrepancy between such opulence and the conditions that 9/10ths of the English population had to endure…
Shakespeare and the Quest for a Golden Age
Shakespeare’s contemporary Pietro da Cortona The Golden Age Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’sMetamorphosis (1565) has this wonderful description of the four ages of man on earth: the golden age, the silver age, the brazen age and the iron age. The golden age – as here described- is a wonderful period in which humans lived in harmony with…
Literature and Life at Mission Australia Surry Hills- Week 3
Dawn over Kuring-gai Chase- North of Sydney 5 new students last night! That was fabulous and we had some really great discussions on what poetic language can do through its use of sound patterning, its use of connotations (rather than denotations) and its use of imagery (visual, tactile, kinetic etc)… And we had a wonderful…
Heathcliffe: Daemon or Demon – Withering Frights
Daemon = a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans. Demon = an evil spirit or devil, especially one thought to possess a person or act as a tormentor in hell. Which of these words most aptly describes Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights? Heathcliff is a foundling who is cared for by old…
Clemente Mission Australia Week 2 Continued
The Clemente Program being run from Australian Catholic University in close partnership with range of Welfare Organizations such as Mission Australia, was started some years ago by an American, Earl Shorris. Shorris had a vision that poverty stricken Americans needed a way in which they could reclaim their dignity, their creative spirit, their intelligence. He wrote a…
Poetry at Mission Australia Surry Hills- Clemente Week 2
Hi All, I thought I would put your blog topics up here before our session today to give you a chance to think ahead about how you might use some of today’s content in working towards your own blog entries. Find a range of topics here. You only need to chose one and you can…
Shakespeare The Anarchist!
At every moment of his writing Shakespeare tries to shake us out of our habitual ways of thinking and being. He is in anarchist in the sense that he wants us to look critically at the way we are controlled by our prejudices. In his sonnet “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” (Sonnet 130) he…
Introduction to Literature (Poetry, Prose and Drama), Clemente Mission Australia Week 1
Thank you all for your keen participation at our first literature seminar (lecture/ tutorial) on Wednesday last (4th March). It was really good to feel that there was such interest in the subject and such a willingness to engage in questions and answers. A short summary of what we did (and you can listen to…
Pan daemon ium Week 2- the Power of Impressions.
The Romantics were searching deeply for the inner spirit, in themselves, in those around them, in the natural world… As William Blake put it so succinctly “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/ And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/ Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/ And Eternity in an hour”…
Sunday Morning Walk to Cobah Point (Hawkesbury River)
This morning’s walk began at dawn over Kuring-gai Chase On the track to Cobah Point- early morning mist; while the temperature is already in the low 20s there is a definite sense of autumn in the air with all this mist, and – as you will see- with all the early morning spiders: Here the…
Shakespeare and the Renaissance: Week 1 2015
Elizabeth the First’s poem “On Monsieur’s Departure” shows well how literature of the Renaissance was so often deeply concerned with the inner workings of the human soul. The rich texture of the language, dramatising her conflicted nature in loving the French Duke of Anjou, draws the reader in to her effort to understand by describing…
Nineteenth Century (Romanticism and Victorianism) Week 1
William Blake’s “The Garden of Love” and William Wordsworth’s two poems “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned” provided a real gateway into some of the central insights of the Romantic Movement: their disaffection with mere book learning, with conventional morality and their belief in the power of nature and the resources of childhood to vanquish the…
Autumn Semester 2015
Hi All, I am looking forward very much to working with you in all of the following units: Nineteenth Century Literature (ENGL200); Shakespeare & The Renaissance (ENGL210); Introduction to Literature (Clemente- Mission Australia Students, ENGL104); Learning in the Community (HUMA247)and (ARTS232). This is the space where I will be posting my weekly reflections on our…
The Language of 20th Century Drama- Harold Pinter
We had an amazing hour today listening to Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech. This is one of the most extraordinary documents by one of the 20th Century’s greatest playwrights. In his speech, as in his plays, he dares to reveal that most of the language that is used on this planet is a tissue…
William Blake and Patrick White
Patrick White was clearly deeply influenced by William Blake. Not only does his novel Riders in the Chariot (arguably his most radical religious novel) begin with a core quote about the power of the prophetic imagination from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, but White’s obsession with explicitly exploring the transformative power of art, of literature is central…
D.H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield
Two extraordinary, brilliant writers who refused to fit into the cage that society wanted for them. There is David Herbert Lawrence with his wild sense of the power and sacredness of sexuality, of the way in which the rhythms of the universe are all in a constant state of creative flux and then there is Katherine…
The Visionary Imagination: Remembering Babylon
Photo Courtesy of Juno Gemes Today we discussed the way in which Janet McIvor’s experience of being overwhelmed by a swarm of bees is the encrustation that heralds her liberation into a life of dedication and purpose as a Nun. This extraordinary episode builds on the earlier episode in which the young Janet peels a…
David Malouf on Campus!
We had a wonderful lecture/ talk from David Malouf yesterday. His focus was on Fly Away Peter, but he also spent time sharing with us his sense of how we need to read his work, indeed any great literature, in order to connect with the experience that it is trying to engage us with. Literature, as…
20thC/ Visionary Imagination – Remembering Babylon- David Malouf- Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen”
David Malouf is arguably one of the finest authors writing in English today. His deep interest in the way imagination is a tool for understanding the world more completely than any scientific or psychological analysis might do. His vision- through story telling- of how early colonists might have responded to an outcast (Gemmy Fairley) shows…
David Malouf- Fly Away Peter
Next week David Malouf will be visiting us in person. This will be a fabulous opportunity to interact with one of the world’s leading authors. He was one of my teachers in my early undergraduate days at Sydney University. I remember him teaching Shakespeare and also contributing his poetry to our Sydney University Literary Club.…
George Orwell- Politics and the English Language
This essay is essential reading for anyone keen to develop their capacity for effective, clear writing. Orwell makes the point powerfully that writing simply, clearly with a real sense of what one is saying is a means for not only learning about what we think ourselves, but also a means for changing the sloppiness of the…
The Visionary Imagination Week 7
What an amazing day viewing a specially created exhibition of Blake’s original Job engravings and then an extraordinary private showing and explanation of one of the contemporary Australian masters of Visionary Imagination, Brett Whiteley- at the Studio where he worked during his lifetime. While it was a small group we were very lucky to have…
Australian Literature Week 7: Contemporary Poets
Who are some of Australia’s finest contemporary poets? The list is very long, but we focussed in on some of the very best: Romaine Moreton, an indigenous poet who celebrates the continuing creative force of her culture, despite the huge difficulties they face: Rich In Spirit and Soul David Malouf, novelist and poet who powerfully…
Twentieth Century Literature Week 6: Modernism
The visit to the art gallery of NSW last week was a perfect introduction to what we entered into today. It makes so much more sense talking about Virginia Woolf’s “Stream of Consciousness” and T.S. Eliot’s fragmented narratives (“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”- The Waste Land) after having seen and discussed Picasso and…
Visionary Imagination Week 6- half way!
This week we began exploring Blake’s illustrations to the Book of Job alongside The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Only a few sets of original prints from The Book of Job engravings exist in the world and one of the sets is housed at the NSW Art Gallery, protected by humidity, and light for all to…
Australian Literature Week 6: Mid Twentieth Century Poets
Today we spent time with Judith Wright, Oodgeroo Noonuccal and with Francis Webb (amongst several other twentieth century Australian poets: James McAuley, “Ern Malley”, Rosemary Dobson, Roland Robinson, A.D. Hope….). Judith Wright’s wonderful poem “Two Dreamtimes” records her poetic conversation with indigenous poet Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal). The poem offers a tribute of reconciliation in…
Visionary Imagination Week 5: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell etc.
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…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025 
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