Well done to this fabulous group of bloggers who all scored a High Distinction for their wonderful blogs on the literature of the Romantic and Victorian periods. These are all model ePortfolios that will serve these students very well when they go for job interviews in a year or so. Thank you all for your…
Clemente Campbelltown 2018! Final Session: thank you!
Thank you all for being such a wonderful responsive group during the last 12 weeks. Our work together bringing Antony and Cleopatra to life with all your diverse talents will live with me for a long time- and the comments by Bell Shakespeare Company: “a privilege to be invited to come”- will also live with…
The Importance of Being Earnest Part 2
Today we almost finished watching the whole of the Suchet version of this amazing play and then had a wonderful tutorial in which we drilled down deeply into how Wilde’s language parodies the late Victorians. He is such an amazingly clever artist. Listen to the tutorial below to see how clever our students are in…
Shakespeare’s The Tempest Week 2- Summary and Blog Topics
Today we focussed attention on the Globe Theatre’s recent production of The Tempest. What a wonderfully powerful production this is! In Tutorials we concentrated on a couple of poems by George Herbert which provided a nice balance to the intensity of dramatic confrontation in the early scenes of The Tempest. Here is a useful link to…
Clemente Campbelltown – Prose 2: Tim Winton, George Orwell, Henry Lawson…
Please find here a reading of Tim Winton’s “Sand” together with a class discussion on this amazingly virtuosic prose writer who seems to be able to bend language to the shape of whatever takes his fancy! Enjoy this wonderful class interaction with the students at Campbelltown! Click on each of these images to enlarge them:…
Oscar Wilde and the End of the 19th Century
David Suchet in the role of Lady Bracknell brings Oscar Wilde’s satire of the British upper classes into a powerful focus. She is so much of the age of surfaces that anything she says or does is a complete parody of who she might think she is. Take a look at this interview with Suchet on his role in…
Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Illych & Master and Man
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…
Shakespeare’s The Tempest 2018
This is Shakespeare’s most imaginative and meaningful piece of theatre. Today we began watching the Globe Theatre’s amazing recent production starring Roger Allam. This production takes you into the heart of the Globe Theatre and presents the play as close as one can imagine to how it would have appeared in Shakespeare’s own time. See…
Clemente Campbelltown: Prose 1
Hello All – this is where you can hear last Wednesday’s talk about prose and the requirements for your up and coming take- home exam. Firstly find here a recording of our 2 hour session! Enjoy:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream- performance rehearsal & Shakespeare Sonnets 18, 65 & 73
Hi All, Scroll to the bottom of this blog for audio files for today’s tutorials and lecture (which was mainly a workshop). But before you go there, please listen to this amazing discussion about the nature of BEAUTY- a topic so close to Shakespeare’s heart- here spoken about by the late Irish poet John O’Donoghue.…
New York: Literature & Drama 2019 – Information Session.
Hi All, prospective New York (Literature and Drama) Students 2019. Please find below both the slides that were used during the information session (with James Marland and Michael Griffith) AND a recording of what we presented – and some of your questions- please be in touch with either James (James.marland@acu.edu.au) or myself (Michael.griffith@acu.edu.au) if there…
Art Gallery Visit for Clemente Campbelltown Students
A fabulous morning was had by all as we explored the ways in which the techniques and subject matter of paintings mirror the ways in which writers produce their poetry, drama and fiction. Much discussion ensued about the ways in which painters produced textures through their brush strokes, colour contrasts and thickness of paint. This…
George Eliot- Silas Marner: Lecture & Tutorial
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…
Romanticism & Victorianism: First Trawl through Blog Posts
Hi All, there have been some outstanding blogs on aspects of the 19th Century. This is a wonderful start to your blogging for this unit! I thought I would share with you a range of the creatively exciting posts by members of our group. Thank you all for your terrific efforts here. This proves to…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Part 2
Le Painting by Henri Fuseli This week we explored many of the “languages” of the play: rustic, lovers, aristocratic, fairy… and we also focussed closely on that most mysterious speech by Bottom about Bottom’s dream. We came to no clear conclusion on this speech, but, in the context of Hypollyta’s response to Theseus at the…
Shakespeare and the Renaissance- Blogs Take 1: Some of the Highlights
HI All, THE SHAKESPEARE AND RENAISSANCE GROUP OF STUDENTS 2018 there are some outstanding bloggers amongst this group; this is a small showcase of some amazing work by creatively gifted and talented students. It has been so good to see many of you making your blog space your own, using it both to flex your…
Challenges to Utilitarian Education: Arnold & Newman…
Originally posted on Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025:
This week we explored the ways in which writers and artists in the Victorian Age tried to undermine the prevailing utilitarian views on education. We have seen this presented very strongly in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times with his emphasis on the importance of Wonder and…
Challenges to Utilitarian Education: Matthew Arnold & Cardinal Newman…
This week we explored the ways in which writers and artists in the Victorian Age tried to undermine the prevailing utilitarian views on education. We have seen this presented very strongly in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times with his emphasis on the importance of Wonder and Imagination as counters to a world run on facts. Matthew Arnold…
Shakespeare Week 3: Marlow, Ralegh, Shakespeare ( A Midsummer Night’s Dream/ As You Like It)
Originally posted on Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025:
We covered some really interesting ground in class today through exploring the Pastoral tradition as presented by Marlow (in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and as knocked down by Ralegh (in “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”). So these poems are presenting critically…
Shakespeare Week 7: Marlow, Ralegh, Shakespeare ( A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
We covered some really interesting ground in class today through exploring the Pastoral tradition as presented by Marlow (in “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and as knocked down by Ralegh (in “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”). So these poems are presenting critically the whole idea of the Pastoral world: is it a great…
The Art Gallery of NSW with Nineteenth Century Literature Students.
What a blast to be given the opportunity to try to link literary themes to artistic expression in the visual arts!. I think I learnt as much as the students! Perhaps the most important insight of the morning is the extent to which Romanticism as expressed through early Australian art, gives such a powerful vision…
Shakespeare Week 6- from Classical Tragedy to Romantic Comedy: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Today we broached one of Shakespeare’s most loved plays, his celebratory fantasy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We explored the ways in which Shakespeare in his opening scenes ricochets his audience from the high-sounding, poetical iambic pentameter of the Greek court through to the passionate language of the Romantic lurvers and then down into the depths of…
Moving into the Victorian Age with Dickens and others.
Blog Topics galore!!!! *Today we tapped into Dickens’ challenge to the educational systems of his day. *How effective do you think he was in pointing to the heart of the problem with contemporary education? *Have we learned anything since his day? *Write a short piece that expresses your sense of the value of Dickens’ educational…
Victorianism and Charles Dickens
Originally posted on Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025:
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…
A Day of Shakespeare!
ACU Students had a feast of Shakespeare in Australia yesterday! As is well known one of the first plays to be produced in Australia, back in 1800, was Shakespeare’s Henry IV, with a convict cast. What an amazing historic event that was, is, and remains. To have Shakespeare’s subversive political stance, his hatred of officialdom,…
Unacknowledged Legislators!
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World. Shelley was clearly moved to declare that poets had a fundamentally important role in the world, reminding humans about things that really mattered, beyond the entrapments of material possessions. So what was it that Shelley was so deeply drawn towards? If we look at the opening sentences…
Shakespeare 2018 Week 3: Becoming Antony, Cleopatra and their host of followers!
Wow, what a gas! Today we plunged right in to the world of Antony and Cleopatra, workshopping some of the key scenes from the early part of the play and identified some of the complex emotional interactions that this play embodies in “living lines”! (as Ben Jonson so rightly observed.) This was a wonderful opportunity…
Romanticism Week 3
So how have I been responding to all these radical ideas developed during the Romantic period? What has caught my attention as being especially relevant to my own experience and my own period of history? Now is my chance to express something of my reaction to all I have been reading, either in the form…
Shakespeare 2018 Week 2: Heading into Egypt!
We accelerated our entry into the world of Cleopatra today by looking closely at the scene (in Act 2.2) where Enobarbus describes Cleopatra in terms that evoke her amazing attractive power: The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold, Purple the sails, and so perfumed…
Shakespeare Plus 2018!!!
This semester’s Shakespeare unit has at its focus the wonderful Antony and Cleopatra which is being presented by Bell Shakespeare later this month.And we are all off to see their production on Friday March 23rd- Yoo Hoo! Accompanying us will also be a group of around 15 students from the Clemente Program(for those experiencing multiple disadvantage)…
Proud Grandad!
It was wonderful today to be able to “shout” my granddaughter Leeara to lunch in our sunny quadrangle. Leeara has enrolled in a Bachelor of Science Psychology at ACU Strathfield, one of the very few universities in Australia who have made this particular degree available. It was great to be able to introduce Leeara to…
Welcome to Nineteenth Century Romanticism 2018
We had our first class yesterday and plunged straight into the radicalism of William Blake and William Wordsworth. William Blake dared to openly challenge the dark world of the 18th Century Church with its restrictive moralism and its fear and hatred of the human body. “The Garden of Love” is Blake’s symbolic sermon on how…
Best New York Blogs 2018!!
Here is our fabulous group of 2018 in the heart of Harlem, New York, indeed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This was one of our most exciting and informative days in which the beating heart of American culture was opened to us through the oratorical powers of Cedric our African American…
The MOMA: Contemporary American Art as a context for Contemporary American Literature.
Wiliam Carlos Williams, Charles Demuth, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara, Jackson Pollock…. these are some of the interlocking names that bring literature and the visual arts together. Today we had a wonderfully rich tour, conducted by MOMA lecturer Sylvia into some of these interconnections. Here is the full audio lecture/ floor talk and attached…
Day 5: Brooklyn with Walt Whitman and Hart Crane and The Book of Mormon
Today was a momentous day for honouring Walt Whitman’s wonderfully Quaker imagination and Hart Crane’s spiritualisation of one of the icons that preceded modernism. Whitman was of course passionate about the Brooklyn Ferry which he travelled on regularly from his home in Brooklyn to Manhatten. But it was not just the ferry, but it was…
Central Park & The Plaza: Fitzgerald (1922) and Salinger (1951)
Today we had the privilege of being conducted around key sections of Central Park and the Plaza Hotel by our two incredibly well prepared literary tour leaders Eric and Robb. The brief was to take us to the Central Park Duck Pond which is such an obsession for young Holden Caulfield and then on to…
Carnegie Hall: The Annie Moses “Blue Grass” Band Live in Concert
I just happened to run into Carnegie Hall on a walk the day before yesterday and wondered how good it would be if a concert were on there. I do know that Carnegie Hall is one of the most famous music venues in the world and that it has the best acoustics of any hall…
New York Library- a MUST visit for ACU students
The New York Library is an amazing building with incredible literary, dramatic and artistic resources. You MUST visit here before you leave. In particular you should check out the extraordinary exhibition on the BEAT GENERATION that is directly in front of you as you enter the library. Here is the library and here is what…
Harlem- Day 4: James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes
We had a very full, awesome day in Harlem yesterday (Sunday). It began with a gospel church service and then a very detailed street tour covering the important locations of our three key authors. These were embedded in the wider cultural history of Harlem. Eric (our team leader began with a talk on why this…
New York Literature and Drama Day 3: Washington Square, Greenwich Village:
Washington Square was the start of our literary tours around New York. This brought Henry James into focus and his wonderful early novel Washington Square which powerfully challenged the ethos of his day and found ways of celebrating those who don’t necessarily shine in the public arena. Catherine Sloper, who lived out her life in…
Thursday Day 2: The Met: American Art and its relation to Literature
Today we had a wonderful guide Lauren Ebin (one-time Archeologist) who took us on a personalized tour of some of the best of American art that interfaced with the poetry, fiction and autobiography that we are studying. She began in the 18thC with those wondrous, massive paintings of Washington which depicted him as a democrat,…
New York- Wednesday 17th January 2018
Today provided an amazing introduction to the life, culture and history of New York. Our students had 2 guest speakers for their early morning tutorial: Eric Chase (from New York Literary Pub Crawls) (CLICK) and Nick Birns from New York University (CLICK). Eric gave a wonderful thumbnail sketch of what literary tours he is going to…
Arrival in New York- ACU Literature and Drama Team!! Made It!!
All 23 of us have made it after a marathon journey from Sydney via LA to JFK. Here we are in Sydney, fresh and ready for our LONG trip. This is minus our Brisbane cohort who will be meeting up with us in LA: After a short stop in LA we were winging our way…
New York, New York: here we come- get ready for the ACU Aussie Literature&Drama Team
Hi All, we have 20 highly eager students some of whom have never seen snow, some never been to the USA, some never been out of OZ! They are all incredibly excited (as are the accompanying staff!) to get to this city that never sleeps to take in and absorb the culture, the history, the…
Blogging in New York- on Literature and Drama! Yay!
Hi All- we may be lucky enough to see the streets of New York just like it is presented below! At all events blogging your way through New York is one sure way of making your trip significant and memorable. Yes you have three specific questions in both literature and drama that you must answer…
Rilke- Duino Elegies: Seminar 4 Aquinas Academy
Today we concluded our 4 part series on the later Rilke, focussing especially on the Duino Elegies. Today we had the privilege of hearing Thomas Merton speak broadly about Rilke and the in a more focussed way about the Duino Elegies themselves. It may be little known but Merton saw Rilke as one of the…
William Blake, born 28th November 1757!
William Blake was born on this day exactly 260 years ago. William Blake was one of the greatest poets of the English language, but he was also a mystic whose vision continues to inform the lives of many people. His vision was Christian, but it was so broadly Christian that it included all religions. One…
Best American Literature Blogs 2017
American Literature was a new unit for me to teach this semester at Australian Catholic University, but it dovetails beautifully into the short intensive unit I teach in January The Literature and Drama of New York which is being taught in January in the snow and ice of that amazing city. So this semester-long unit American Literature…
Best Australian Literature Blogs 2017
Russell Drysdale “The Mountain Has Its Own Meaning” Judith Wright An occasion for celebration: Australian Literature – a first year unit at Australian Catholic University- has again produced an extraordinary group of bloggers. Their work reveals how blogging has enabled them to connect with Aust. Lit. in a way that expands beyond the rigours of…
Rilke The Duino Elegies Part 3
Our third Rilke seminar at the Aquinas academy began by looking at the following proposition and then at the same time pondering the relationship between this and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 146. (click to view). Both Rilke and Shakespeare indicate that living in the face of death can indeed be a sober annihilation of all that is false…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025 
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