94 resultados para Greek poetry.
Resumo:
Poetry is routinely seen as ‘marginal’ to public culture, especially in terms of it having lost its status as a form of public speech. Such a condition is often noted in nostalgic terms, in which a golden era—bardic or journalistic—is evoked to illustrate contemporary poetry’s lack. But traces of poetry’s instrumentality, especially as a form of public speech, can be found in various extra-poetic contexts.
In this article, three examples of poetry operating in ‘extra-poetic contexts’ will illustrate the different, sometimes troubling, ways in which traces of poetry as a mode of public speech can be observed in contemporary culture: the poem-cartoons of Michael Leunig; the role of the poet Les Murray in the drafting of a proposed preamble to the Constitution of Australia; and the quotation of William Ernest Henley’s ‘Invictus’ as the final statement of Timothy McVeigh (the ‘Ohio Bomber’) prior to his execution.
These examples illustrate that poetry-as-public-speech engages with political discourse in diverse, incommensurate ways. Leunig’s occasional cartoon-poems, appearing in the metropolitan press, are examples of poetry at its most public and politically engaged state. And yet, even Leunig’s most ‘political’ work gestures towards a realm beyond politics, where the poetic, the comic, and the existential coexist as a way of making life in the political realm more bearable. Les Murray’s role as a ‘national’ poet in the failed attempt to introduce a preamble to the Australian Constitution illustrates the vestigial role that poets can play in nation building. Lastly, McVeigh’s quotation of Henley, made without any explanation, shows the unpredictable and potentially volatile condition of poetry-as-public-speech. In addition, the examples variously engage in arguments about the relationship between the individual and the state, private identity and national history.
Resumo:
This dissertation employs the methodologies of postcolonial theory and hyperreal theory (following Baudrillard), in order to investigate articulations of identity, nation and representation in contemporary Australian poetry. Informed by a comparative analysis of contemporary Latin American poetry and cultural theory (in translation), as a means of re-examining the Australian context, this dissertation develops a new transnational model of Australian poetics. The central thesis of this dissertation is that contemporary Australian poetry engages with the postcolonial at its limits. That is, at those sites of postcoloniality that are already mapped by theory, but also at those that occur beyond postcolonial theory. The hyperreal is understood as one such limit, traceable within the poetry but silenced in conventional postcolonial theory. As another limit to the postcolonial, this dissertation reads Latin American poetry and theory, in whose texts postcolonial theory is actively resisted, but where postcolonial and hyperreal poetics nevertheless intersect. The original critical context constructed by this dissertation enables a new set of readings of Australian identity through its poetry. Within this new interpretative context, the readings of contemporary Australian poetry articulate a psycho-social postcoloniality; offer a template for future transactions between national poetry and global politics; and develop a model of the postcolonial hyperreal.
Resumo:
This dissertation is structured around five Australian mystical poets: Ada Cambridge, John Shaw Neilson, Francis Webb, Judith Wright and Kevin Hart. It examines the varieties of Western Christian mysticism upon which these poets draw, or with which they exhibit affinities. A short prelude section to each chapter considers the thematic parallels of their contemporaries, while the final chapter critically investigates constructions of Indigeneity in Australian mystical poetry and the renegotiated mystical poetics of Indigenous poets and theologians. The central argument of this dissertation is that an understanding of Western Christian mysticism is essential to the study of Australian poetry. There are three sub-arguments: firstly, that Australian literary criticism regarding the mystical largely avoids the concept of mysticism as a shifting notion both historically and in the present; secondly, that what passes for mysticism is recurringly subject to poorly defined constructions of mysticism as well as individual poets’ use of the mystical for personal, creative or ideological purposes; thirdly, that in avoiding the concept of a shifting notion critics have ignored the increasing contribution of Australian poets to national and international discourses of mysticism.
Resumo:
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Resumo:
Plato criticizes poetry in several of his dialogues, beginning with Apology, his first work, and ending with Laws, his last. In these dialogues, his criticism of poetry can be divided into two streams: poetry is criticized for either being divinely inspired, or because it is mimetic or imitative of reality. However, of the dialogues which criticize poetry in these ways, it is not until Laws that Plato mentions both inspiration and mimesis together, and then it is only in a few sentences. Furthermore, nowhere in the dialogues does Plato discuss their relationship. This situation has a parallel in the secondary literature. While much work has been done on inspiration or mimesis in Plato’s criticism of poetry, very little work exists which discusses the connection between them. This study examines Plato’s treatment - in the six relevant dialogues - of these two poetic elements, inspiration and mimesis, and shows that a relationship exists between them. Both can be seen to relate to two important Socratic-Platonic concerns: the care of the soul and the welfare of the state. These concerns represent a synthesis of Socratic moral philosophy with Platonic political beliefs. In the ‘inspiration’ dialogues, Ion, Apology, Meno, Phaedrus and Laws, poetic inspiration can affect the Socratic exhortation which considers the care of the individual soul. Further, as we are told in Apology, Crito and Gorgias, it is the good man, the virtuous man - the one who cares for his soul - who also cares for the welfare of the state. Therefore, in its effect on the individual soul, poetic inspiration can also indirectly affect the state. In the ‘mimesis’ dialogues, Republic and Laws, this same exhortation, on the care of the soul, is posed, but it is has now been rendered into a more Platonic form - as either the principle of specialization - the ‘one man, one job’ creed of Republic, which advances the harmony between the three elements of the soul, or as the concord between reason and emotion in Laws. While in Republic, mimesis can damage the tripartite soul's delicate balance, in Laws, mimesis in poetry is used to promote the concord. Further, in both these dialogues, poetic mimesis can affect the welfare of the state. In Republic, Socrates notes that states arc but a product of the individuals of which they are composed Therefore, by affecting the harmony of the individual soul, mimesis can then undermine the harmony of the state, and an imperfect political system, such as a timarchy, an oligarchy, a democracy, or a tyranny, can result. However, in Laws, when it is harnessed by the philosophical lawgivers, mimesis can assist in the concord between the rulers and the ruled, thus serving the welfare of the state. Inspiration and mimesis can thus be seen to be related in their effect on the education of both the individual, in the care of the soul, and the state, in its welfare. Plato's criticism of poetry, therefore, which is centred on these two features, addresses common Platonic concerns: in education, politics, ethics, epistemology and psychology.
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Death determines distinctly different, almost inverse, responses and outcomes for Emily Dickinson and Emily Brontë. Death is an imaginative poetic solution for Dickinson, demonstrating her belief that art is the only way to transcend death. But death is the ultimate solution for Brontë, for whom freedom of the imagination leads to mystical unity and continuity.
Resumo:
Focuses on the themes and preoccupations in Greek-Australian literature that reflect the influence of Australia on the traditional sense of identity of Greek migrants. Predominant concerns connected with identity are those of nostalgic references to the homeland, feelings of alienation and discrimination. These themes are related to what is recognised in life and in literature as "xenitia". Second generation writers reveal an acceptance of belonging to two cultures and having dual identities.
Resumo:
Argues that the most influential landscape poetry deals with landscape as an aesthetic concept, and also with the politics of land ownership. Several "landscape poets". Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, have given voice to some of the most compelling social currents in society, and their work has an important place in contemporary political debate.