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…
William Blake in 2014! Heaven in a Wild Flower!
What a great start to our excursion into William Blake territory… and great to be back with you all again! So what did we cover today! We explored something of WB’s background especially the politics of his time and his reaction to this. Most importantly we began to get a sense of WB’s mystical sense…
Blog Topics- Australian Lit- for Week Two- coming thick and fast
Australian Literature and Landscape- Sydney Boronias in the Bush near Galston Gorge (27/07/2014) Australian Literature: we had a great introductory day today exploring what is meant by Judith Wright’s wish not to “chisel things into new shapes. The remnant of a mountain has its own meaning.” She was so ahead of her time with her concern to…
Spring has Sprung in 2014!
Hi all, I have just been for a long bush walk through Kuring-gai Chase near my place and the deep-pink Boronias and pale-pink Wax Flowers (Eriostemon Australis) and the luminous red and white Epacris (Native Fuchsias) are already coming into flower- and it is still mid-winter! That has to be one of the most beautiful…
Weeks 10-12…. nearing the finishing line! YaY
One of the high points of our semester was the visit to our campus by world famous Australian novelist David Malouf. Thank you David for giving our students so much of your valuable time! Indeed, in addition to the excitement of having David Malouf with us, It has been quite a journey in these last…
Week 9- week before our well-earned break!
Hi all, this visit to the Brett Whiteley studio a few weeks ago was one of the high points for us all on the ACU literary calendar. What a fabulous moment this was for 3rd year students studying William Blake and his impact on Australian artists and writers to see Brett Whiteley’s image of William…
Week 8: Literature Bloggers Reach New Heights of Creativity
Hello all, I have been amazed, inspired and delighted by the overall quality of the literature blogs coming out of ACU this semester. There is some wonderfully original work appearing in text, photos and youtube videos recording student’s responses to stories, poems and paintings. Take for example this short video exploring the contrasting imagery in…
Week 7- Modernism in the Art Gallery/ The Poetry of Kevin Hart/ The Everlasting Gospel
Topics for Week 7 ENGL202 chose one of the modernist paintings viewed during this week’s visit (go on a virtual visit of the gallery if you missed the visit) and discuss the ways in which it has opened your mind to a new understanding of what Modernism is and how this understanding helps your appreciation…
Week 6 Blog Topics- Exactly Half Way Through Semester!
Week 6 has seen Australian Lit students introduced to the delights of the NSW Art Gallery. I trust that you have now discovered how interesting it is to link themes and techniques from paintings with themes in literature. This is always a marvellous way to expand people’s sense of the wider cultural context in which…
Week 5: Writing & Revolution
Writers/ Artists have, since Plato’s time, been seen as dangerous to the stability of the state. Why? Because they dare to question! They dare to expose! As Percy Shelley said early in the 19th Century “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators” – by which he might have meant that they saw truths, spoke them, but were…
Week 4 – Art and Poetry
This week has been a fabulous week for the integration of literature and art. Third years went to the Art Gallery of NSW to explore the original etchings of William Blake’s Book of Job which gave a rare glimpse of Blake’s deep challenge to the moralistic Christianity of his times. For Blake Job’s salvation lay…
Week 3 Literature and Blog Topics
Hello all, read on to find out what this image is and what the Yellow House is. The semester has finally gained momentum and we are all opening our eyes to the literary and artistic feasts before us! In Aust Lit this week we delved into Early Colonial literature: Charles Harpur, Anne Meredith Henry Kendall…
End of Week Two- Scroll to the end for new topics!
An amazing week! Spring is intensifying: if you go into the bush now the beautiful pink Wax Flowers (Eriostomon Australis) are pumping out their colour Here they are intermingling with the remnants of the Boronias which were out so strongly last week: And and along with sprays of pink these the little dark buds of Gompholobium…
Literature: We have reached the end of week 1 !
Hi all, we come to the end of a busy week settling in to our literature studies and now we have the grand-finalé today and tomorrow with this amazing conference “Addressing the Sacred” in which we have writers, artists, literary critics and theologians sharing their gifts and their experience with us. I hope as many…
Welcome Spring Semester 2013
Please enjoy the video that I have created as an introduction to Literature this semester. Regardless of which unit you are doing you will find this 7 minute video useful as a “starter”. Click on this image to make the face “move”! Please remember also that for all your units you are expected to spend…
Don’t miss the first four episodes of our pioneering Transmedia Group + Fifth!!
http://ineternallinestotimethougrowst.wordpress.com And thank you to all the brave members of this group for getting this cutting edge event up and running. Enjoy MG And here is the Fifth Episode: http://s00107891.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/transmedia-shakespeare-in-the-library-episode-five/ http://s00107891.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/week-11-peer-review/
The David Malouf Symposium (at ACU) in Honour of David’s 80th Year
If you haven’t caught up with the David Malouf Symposium yet, then please take a look at the following article (click on the image) which will also take you to the Registration page: This photo was taken last week on the day that David Malouf came and visited the Clemente Mission Australia students in Surry…
Transmedia- there is more !!!!
Go to the blog before last to see the whole topic. Here are a few more key links that might give you more ideas for Transmedia collaborative creation: http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html http://transmediacoalition.com/aondine/story/what-is-transmedia http://transmediacoalition.com/aondine/story/transmedia-resources http://transmediacoalition.com/aondine/story/transmedia-in-canada http://www.starlightrunner.com/transmedia
Clemente- Mission Australia- Blog Topics for Week 10: Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age.
Hi all! First- the announcement: A performance of selected scenes from Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age, by students of the Clemente Australian Literature Unit on Wednesday 29th of May at 5pm, at the Mission Australia Centre (MAC) Surry Hills, 19 Denham Street. All Welcome: Free of Charge. Today -at Surry Hills- we begin work on…
Vlogs and Transmedia Story Telling
Hi all, I have a dream that we can profoundly enhance our blogging experience by working together interactively. There is a new mode of on-line story-telling happening called Transmedia and it is being used across a whole range of artistry and industry. It is the way that some marketing companies saturated the community with their…
Week 9 – on campus: George Eliot Middlemarch & Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
This week second years began exploring the world of George Eliot. Middlemarch is the number one novel on the list of the top 100. Can you begin to see why this is so? Here are some Blog topics that you can try out for week 9: 1. Explore the Victorian Web and create a mini-guide on…
David Malouf Clemente Mission Australia Visit
At Mission Australia, Surry Hills we are getting ready for David Malouf’s visit to our class to talk about his amazing novel Remembering Babylon. This is a novel which expresses the importance to our society, of those people who society usually dismisses as having no worth. Gemmy is such a person. Treated badly as a child…
Week 8 (on campus) Blog Topics.
Nineteenth Century Literature: Charles Dickens Hard Times. 1. Imagine yourself into the role of Sissy Jupe (Girl Number 20!). Write a letter to a friend (back in the circus) describing what it feels like to be living with the Gradgrinds. 2. Write a review guide to the resources on Dickens available on The Victorian Web…
Clemente Week 7
Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Sundry Other Literary Delights
With third years I went last night to see John Bell playing Falstaff in the complete production of Henry IV Part One and Part Two at the Sydney Opera House. As was said in a recent review, this was John Bell’s best performance of his career. This was an amazing, energizing production that brought Falstaff…
Pandaemonium- Heading into mid semester-
Blog Topics for Romantic Victorians and Shakespeareans. If you are a Romantic Victorian enthusiast then these topics are for thee: 1/ Take the first lines from any stanza of poetry studied in this last week and compose a poem that generates a reflection on how life in the 21st Century compares with life in the…
Clemente Literature Journal (Blog) Topics Weeks 5-7
LIterature Journal (Blog) Topics for Clemente Week 5-7. . Chose any one of the poems or stories that we have studied in the last few weeks and answer either of the following two questions: Either What experience, idea or feeling is the author trying to convey? How effective is the way the author has used…
Clemente Mission Australia ENGL102 Week 4 – Blog Topics
Thank you all for your participation in the Art Gallery visit last week. Many of the pictures/ sculptures that we pondered over can be found in this blog if you click on “NSW Art Gallery Visits” at the top of this page or click on the image below: Blog Topics can be found on pages…
Week 4- Bernard Shaw and Shakespeare
William Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw were both dramatists who were trying to make the world a better place. Will Shakespeare did this by allowing his imagination to transform the Globe. The audience contained therein had their imaginations filled with new possibilities, new hopes of a world free from contaminations of greed and aggression. Bernard Shaw…
Victorian Working Women
Week Three: Tempestuous Women: Asia, Warren & The Tempest
This week Shakespeare students have been immersing themselves in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, NIneteenth Century students have been wrestling with Bernard Shaw and Clemente (Mission Australia) Students getting on-board with WordPress! You will begin to hear their voices soon, but you may want to have a look at David’s Blog (first cab off the rank) and…
Prometheus and Twelfth Night: Misrule Challenges the Status Quo
Prometheus and Twelfth Night: Misrule Challenges the Status Quo. It is good to see so many of you hopping straight into WordPress with such keenness and proficiency. Remember that you have free help at hand by simply going to http://lynda.acu.edu.au and entering your student username and password. When there go straight to WordPress: Essential Training.…
Welcome Clemente Students at Mission Australia
This week we begin our exploration of Australian Literature in the context of Australian Painting. This is an opportunity for you to read the poetry and fiction of some of our best writers and to see the way their themes are often reflected in other art forms. This is also an opportunity for you to…
William Shakespeare and Mary Wollstonecraft on Sexualization of Women- and other Quirky Topics
This week in Nineteenth Century Literature our core idea was the way the Romantics were searching for Freedom from Tyranny of all kinds. Beethoven is a good example of someone whose music was inspired by this quest. As we see in the film clip from his opera Fidelio, Beethoven was passionate about social justice for…
Welcome to Literature and Life 2013
Hello all! This semester I have the pleasure of teaching second year Nineteenth Century Literature and third year Shakespeare and the Renaissance. Both these units have challenging and exciting components. For the 19th Century we are going to be challenged by Shelley’s verse drama “Prometheus Unbound” and George Eliot’s Middlemarch. For Shakespeare we will plunge into Twelfth…
The Queen with Prince Philip and Great-Grand-Daughter-in-Law Kate Middleton on Campus to Adjudicate Drama Performances
What a joy it was to have royalty with us on Campus. A real treat for all! Second Years still have this wonderful visit to look forward to on Friday. What a wonderful Memento forwarded to us by the Royal Photographer.
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025 
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