Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Multicultural Literature In Australia And The Austlit Database, Michael Jacklin

Michael Jacklin

Did you know that among the earliest of Australia’s multicultural writers is the Spanish-born Rudesindo Salvado, whose memoir, Memorie Storiche dell'Australia, was published in Italy in 1851? Salvado’s book, though perhaps not well-known, is held in its English translation by at least fifty Australian libraries. Better known is The Eureka Stockade, published in Melbourne in 1855 by Italian-born Raffaelo Carboni, another of Australia’s multicultural writers. The AustLit database’s Australian Multicultural Writers subset (http://www.austlit.edu.au/ specialistDatasets/MW) lists more than 3 000 writers who have identified as having cultural backgrounds other than Anglo- Celtic, and whose works have been published from the early …

Place A La Litterature Dans Le Cours De Conversation!, Corinne Etienne, Sylvie Vanbaelen

Sylvie Vanbaelen

Au niveau universitaire, la plupart des programmes de francais offrent un cours que l'on peut classer sous l'appellation generique de "cours de conversation" ("Conversational Skills", "French for Oral Communication, etc.). Si le but de ce cours est clair: ameliorer les competences communicatives orales des apprenants, son contenu est par contre tres ouvert. Dans ce type de cours, la "conversation" prend souvent appui sur l'exploitation de documents authentiques et permet ainsi aux apprenants d'approfondir leurs connaissances culturelles. Cette bipolarite: developpement des competences de communication orale et decouverte de la culture nous semble tout a fait appropriee. On peut cependant regretter l'absence …

Special Issue: Australian Literature In A Global World - Introduction, Wenche Ommundsen, Tony Simoes Da Silva

Wenche Ommundsen

This Special Issue of JASAL is based on the 2008 ASAL conference ‘Australian Literature in a Global World’ at the University of Wollongong, the conference theme in turn inspired by an ARC Discovery project, ‘Globalising Australian Literature’, currently conducted by a team of researchers at the same institution. The overall (and hugely ambitious) aim of both conference and research project was to explore the effects, on the national literature, of different aspects of globalisation: transnational flows of people, ideas and cultural forms; globalisation in the publishing and education industries; the global marketplace for cultural production. The papers tap into a …

Introduction For Text Special Issue: Literature And Public Culture, Wenche Ommundsen

Wenche Ommundsen

No abstract provided.

In Backlash Country: Revisiting The Multicultural Literature Debate In The Wake Of Pauline Hanson, Wenche Ommundsen

Wenche Ommundsen

No abstract provided.

Journal Of The Association For The Study Of Australian Literature - Australian Literature In A Global World, Wenche Ommundsen, Tony Simoes Da Silva

Wenche Ommundsen

No abstract provided.

Editorial - Building Cultural Citizenship: Multiculturalism And Children's Literature, Debra Dudek, Wenche Ommundsen

Wenche Ommundsen

No abstract provided.

Multicultural Literature, Wenche Ommundsen

Wenche Ommundsen

No abstract provided.

The Nonconformists: Dobrica Cosic And Mica Popovic Reinvision Serbia, Nick Miller

Nick Miller

There is little to debate about the nature of Serbian political life since the mid-1980s-it has been highly nationalized, to the point that one can argue that a consensus existed among Serbian public figures that the Serbs' very existence was threatened by their neighbors. This consensus links political, cultural, and intellectual elites regardless of their ideological background. It draws together figures representing great diversity in Serbia. This powerful movement has usually been either dismissed or demonized: dismissed as superficial, the product of the cynical adaptation of politicians to new times, or demonized as something inherent in Serbian political culture, a …

Postwar Serbian Nationalism And The Limits Of Invention, Nick Miller

Nick Miller

Serbs have rarely drawn the attention of theorists of nationalism. Nonetheless, even if they have not been christened this or that sort of nationalist by theorists, they have emerged from the 1990S with two sets of descriptors attached to them by journalists, scholars and politicians, and those descriptors conform to the general outlines of current theoretical discourse. Serbs are either the captives of 'ancient hatreds' or the manipulated victims of modern state-builders. By now most of us no doubt laugh at the notion that ancient hatreds were the catalyst of the wars in Yugoslaviain the 1990S and nod approvingly at …

"Growing Like The Plants From Unseen Roots": The Equalizing Role Of Plant Imagery In Aurora Leigh, Sarah King Steiner

Sarah King Steiner

Plant imagery abounds in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, and critical readings have not thoroughly explored the meaning of and intent behind that imagery. Plant metaphor and images in Aurora Leigh are used to challenge the concept of Victorian women's inherently inferior "nature" and to present an argument for female equality. When traced throughout the work, plant imagery foreshadows Aurora and Marian's ultimate personal independence and familial harmony and helps the reader to understand the poem's controversial ending. Ties to three of Browning's literary influences in the selection of plant images are explored: Emanuel Swedenborg, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Samuel …

Power And The Poet, Spencer Hall

Spencer Hall

Recent criticism has established the pivotal role of "Mont Blanc" and "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" in Shelley's poetic canon. These two difficult and richly textured odes, written during the intellectual and emotional ferment of Shelley's trip to Switzerland in the summer of 1816, seem in many ways like preludes to vision, rites of passage in which the young poet assumes a difinitive poetic voice. They are dynamically transitional poems that bridge the gap between Shelley's early radicalism and the highly complex idealism of his Italian period. They formulate poetic strategies and structures, imaginative forms and concepts, that were to be …

Wordsworth's Later Style, Spencer Hall

Spencer Hall

The three "close readings" described in the March 1978 Editor's Column were introduced with this line from Marianne Moore: "we do not admire what we cannot understand." The proposition is, of course, as patently false to experience as is Keats's at the end of the "Ode on a Grecian Urn." We often admire exceedingly what we do not understand, precisely because we do not understand it. This is as true of literary criticism as of religious revelation (the two activities having become strangely similar these days), and one of the three "close readings" referred to is a significant case in …

Psychoanalysis And Romantic Idealization: The Dialectics Of Love, Barbara Schapiro

Barbara A Schapiro

Presents a psychoanalysis of romantic idealization in Thomas Hardy's novel 'Far From the Madding Crowd.' Biography of Hardy; Effect of narcissistic conflicts and idealizations on Hardy's relationships with women in his life; Plot of the novel; Characters in the novel..

The Bonds Of Love And The Boundaries Of Self In Toni Morrison's "Beloved", Barbara Schapiro

Barbara A Schapiro

Toni Morrison's Beloved penetrates, perhaps more deeply than any historical or psychological study could, the unconscious emotional and psychic consequences of slavery. The novel reveals how the condition of enslavement in the external world, particularly the denial of one's status as a human subject, has deep repercussions in the individual's internal world. These internal resonances are so profound that even if one is eventually freed from external bondage, the self will still be trapped in an inner world that prevents a genuine experience of freedom. As Sethe succinctly puts it, "Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed …

Transitional States And Psychic Change: Thoughts On Reading D. H. Lawrence, Barbara Schapiro

Barbara A Schapiro

One of my favorite scenes in literature occurs in D. H. Lawrence's novel The Rainbow (1915). Tom Brangwen's Polish wife Lydia is upstairs in their home giving birth. Tom is downstairs with Anna, Lydia's four-year-old child by her first marriage. Anna is panic-stricken, screaming in terror for her mother, and Tom is responding to her with irritation and mounting anger. Like the child, he too is feeling shut out and abandoned by Lydia. Tom is made particularly furious by the "blind" and "mechanical" nature of Anna's crying.

Psychoanalysis And Romantic Idealization, Barbara Schapiro

Barbara A Schapiro

No abstract provided.

The Death-Ego And The Vital Self: Romances Of Desire In Literature / Book Review, Barbara Schapiro

Barbara A Schapiro

Psychoanalysis and literary romance share much in common: both are concerned with desire, with elusive objects of desire, and with the dark, hidden, and fantastic dimensions of the human imagination. Gavriel Reisner’s The Death-Ego and the Vital Self explores the interrelationship of psychoanalysis and literary romance with original and often illuminating results.

Trauma And Sadomasochistic Narrative, Barbara Schapiro

Barbara A Schapiro

This essay applies trauma theory and relational psychoanalysis to a close reading of Mary Gaitskill's short story "The Dentist." It argues that the sadomasochistic relationship central to this story, and to much of Gaitskill's fiction, is rooted in trauma and can be illuminated by an understanding of the post-traumatic condition.

Psychoanalysis And The Problem Of Evil, Barbara A. Schapiro

Barbara A Schapiro

Since "evil" has become a term much in vogue in our current political climate, it seems ever more important to explore its psychic meanings and origins. What, first of all, do analysts and therapists mean by the word "evil"? The grandiosity of the term, as well as its traditionally religious connotations, perhaps make it unsuited to the therapeutic context. As Ruth Stein (2002) has commented, "Evil' may sound too allegorical or too concrete, too essentialist or too objective for psychoanalytic ways of thinking that are oriented towards the study of individual subjectivity" (394).

The Death-Ego And The Vital Self, Barbara Schapiro

Barbara A Schapiro

Reviews the book "The Death-Ego and the Vital Self: Romances of Desire in Literature and Psychoanalysis," by Gavriel Reisner.

A Poetics Of History: Karen Cushman's Medieval World, Joseph Zornado

Joseph L Zornado

Historical fiction occupies an uncertain space in the field of children's literature. Offer a teacher or scholar a work of historical fiction in any genre, from picture book to novel, and you are sure to get a varied, contentious response about what makes historical fiction work. Why? Because historical fiction has ambitious, ambiguous aims. For instance, should historical fiction be good history, even if this means the story might be, say, a little dull? Or, on the other hand, should the author take liberties with setting, dialogue, and character in order to provide the audience with "a good read?" What …

Children's Film As Social Practice, Joseph L. Zornado

Joseph L Zornado

In his paper "Children's Film as Social Practice," J. Zornado argues that the animated feature is a genre distinct in its own right, and, although overlooked by film criticism up to now, deserves rigorous, scholarly attention. Zornado employs the term "iconology" to develop a foundation for a critical methodology indebted to Althusser, Foucault, and Lacan as well as contemporary film criticism. Iconology of the animated feature film is the study of the meaning systems of the dominant culture and the ways in which such systems are inscribed into all kinds of social practice geared, specifically, to seduce and inform the …

A Becoming Habit, Joseph Zornado

Joseph L Zornado

Much of Flannery O'Connor's fiction undermines the notion that her texts, or any text for that matter, offers the reader a chance at fixed comprehensibility In fact, O'Connor's fiction often clears itself away as a meaning-bearing icon in order to introduce the reader to something other, to the mystery latent and invisible in the manners. O'Connor remains remarkable as an avowed Catholic and as a writer because she resisted spelling out that mystery though her Catholic faith offered much in the way of dogma that might have sufficed. Even so, there is an indissoluble link between the writer and the …

Economies Of Nature In Shaskespeare, Jean E. Feerick

Jean Feerick