Watching football in marvellous Melbourne : spectators, barrackers and working class rituals

A study of crowds drawn to Australian football matches in colonial Victoria illuminates key aspects of the code's genesis, development and popularity. Australian football was codified by a middle-class elite that, as in Britain, created forms of mass entertainment that were consistent with the kind of industrial capitalist society they were attempting to organise. But the 'lower orders' were inculcated with traditional British folkways in matters of popular amusement, and introduced a style of 'barracking' for this new code that resisted the hegemony of the elite football administrators. By the end of the colonial period Australian football was firmly entrenched as a site of contestation between plebeian and bourgeois codes of spectating that reflected the social and ethnic diversity of the clubs making up the Victorian competition. Australian football thereby offers a classic vignette in the larger history of 'resistance through ritual'.

Origins of Australian Football: Victoria's Early History. Volume 2 : A golden era begins : Football in 'Marvellous Melbourne', 1877 to 1885

This is the second volume of a five volume series that describes, assesses, and analyses football in Victoria during the nineteenth century. This volume looks at the cultural contexts of the sport in the late 1870s and early 1880s, describes the important matches played, and provides a full statistical account of this time period. This book is the first comprehensive discussion of the early period in Australian football's development.

An imperfect narrative of the gay doings and marvellous festivities holden at Althorp in the county of Northants.

Mode of access: Internet.

Into His marvellous light. Studies in life and belief. ...

Mode of access: Internet.

Triumphs and wonders of the 19th century, the true mirror of a phenomenal era, a volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress ...

Mode of access: Internet.

Making sense of an everyday science text : linguistic, visual and spatial design

In this article, we take a close look at the literacy demands of one task from the ‘Marvellous Micro-organisms Stage 3 Life and Living’ Primary Connections unit (Australian Academy of Science, 2005). One lesson from the unit, ‘Exploring Bread’, (pp 4-8) asks students to ‘use bread labels to locate ingredient information and synthesise understanding of bread ingredients’. We draw upon a framework offered by the New London Group (2000), that of linguistic, visual and spatial design, to consider in more detail three bread wrappers and from there the complex literacies that students need to interrelate to undertake the required task. Our findings are that although bread wrappers are an example of an everyday science text, their linguistic, visual and spatial designs and their interrelationship are not trivial. We conclude by reinforcing the need for teachers of science to also consider how the complex design elements of everyday science texts and their interrelated literacies are made visible through instructional practice.

Finding Carpentaria

Invited – and inspired – by Rikki Gunn of GhostNets Australia, in September 2008 sixteen Queensland University of Technology (QUT) design and engineering students and four staff set off on a 2488km journey to spend a fortnight in Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria. We went to undertake a strategic planning project we called Linking Karumba, to encourage social, economic, environmental and cultural linkages across the town. During this visit, we and our local project partners realised there should be a second half to the project, in the other Carpentaria Shire town of Normanton, which saw another group of us travelling north again in 2010 to undertake Get EnGulfed: Normanton2020, looking back and forwards to propose strategies to strengthen local and regional identities. The responsiveness of our students’ work to the character of Carpentarian culture and environment indicate remarkable levels of immersion, and the community expressed their enjoyment of the process and outcomes. As for us - QUT staff and students - we had a marvellous time doing these projects, and this little book is the story of our finding of the landscapes and communities of Carpentaria “where the outback meets the sea”, and of the project work we did together with locals in the two towns. We go to press as news arrives of the official opening of the Karumba Walking track, linking the two parts of the town. We can’t wait to return and make the walk. Shannon Satherley, 2013

Origins of Australian Football: Victoria's Early History. Volume 3: Covert 'Professionalism': The Power of the Wealthy Clubs 1886 to 1890

This volume continues the story of football in Marvellous Melbourne during the 1880s. At this time the VFA continued to expand as Melbourne’s boom continued apace. In 1886 Port Melbourne, Prahran, St Kilda, Footscray and South Williamstown joined the competition, and the Ballarat clubs Ballarat, Ballarat Imperial and South Ballarat were also contending for the VFA premiership. In 1886 matches were divided into four quarters, goal umpires waved two flags to announce a goal, and time clocks and bells were employed to mark the end of quarters. Victoria also played inter-colonial matches against New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia. VFA secretary T.S. Marshall was at the forefront of fighting the game’s turn towards professionalism, but although it was illegal to pay players, the practice continued. The period 1886 to 1890 also set the stage for the eventual formation of the Victorian Football League, for by the end of the 1880s the Victorian Football Association had become in effect a two-tier competition. The most popular clubs in the VFA, South Melbourne, Geelong, Carlton and Essendon collected the lion’s share of the gate money, which they used to build their wealth and entrench their position as the dominant Victorian teams. The lower tier clubs had to make do with paltry gate money and season fixtures that advantaged the strong clubs. In these fixtures the strong clubs elected to play each other first to increase their gate money, and only deemed to play the poorer clubs at the start of the season. This led to an increasing divide between the VFA’s rich and poor, and by 1890 South Williamstown and Prahran merged with Williamstown and St Kilda respectively, University dropped out of senior ranks, and the Ballarat clubs were excluded from competing for the VFA premiership, which left 12 senior clubs until Collingwood’s emergence in 1892. At this time, no team was as powerful as South Melbourne, which experienced the greatest success in the club’s VFA and VFL history when it collected triple premiership crowns in 1888, 1889, and 1890. South Melbourne was a most ambitious club and spearheaded the move towards professionalism, although this could not be made public. The fine teams it produced at this time contained some of the greatest players of the era, such as Peter Burns, “Sonny” Elms and “Dinny” McKay, and it looked after players with health insurance, jobs, inter-colonial trips, and other incentives. Geelong’s premiership in 1886 was perhaps its greatest triumph, but this success was followed by a premiership drought that would last for 39 years. Carlton remained one of Victorian football’s power clubs, and after securing the premiership in 1887 continued to compete for top honours. As always, the game became ever more popular and world record crowds of over 30,000 attended matches between South Melbourne, Carlton, Geelong and Essendon.

The popular mechanicals

In Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, six workers aspire to present a play for the Royal Wedding. We see their efforts and their antics in the framework of the Royal Court and the supernatural fairy world. We love them for their simplicity, laugh at their homespun ways and forgive their stumbles as they perform their play in the royal presence. In the marvellous irreverence of The Popular Mechanicals, Keith Robinson and Tony Taylor have thrown Shakespeare to the mercy of Australian larrikin humour and placed the lowly workers centre stage. This is A Midsummer Night's Dream without the Royals. Shakespeare's mechanicals become the stars, the kings of their own world, where dreams can come true, if only for a moment. With the innocence of clowns they love life, feel joy, know fear, bear sadness. In the end it is we the audience who become the Royal presence, to judge them if we dare.

Justicia caballeresca en América

Integran este número de la revista ponencias presentadas en Studia Hispanica Medievalia VIII: Actas de las IX Jornadas Internacionales de Literatura Española Medieval, 2008, y de Homenaje al Quinto Centenario de Amadis de Gaula.

Caminhos de Mia Couto: estratégias narrativas em torno da paisagem moçambicana

A obra romanesca de Mia Couto é o objeto da investigação desta tese, ponto de partida para tentar compreender a contribuição do autor na afirmação do romance africano e na reconstrução da identidade de seu país, Moçambique. Para tanto, o estudo discute a importância da revelação de uma paisagem oculta ao leitor, de matriz cultural e complexo entendimento. O capítulo que traz esta análise mostra como a obra retrata as condições históricas e políticas de dominação, desigualdade, identificando aqui e lá um tom levemente engajado na escrita miacoutiana, tanto quanto suas posições ideológicas, suas denúncias. Entre os temas mais destacados na obra está o animismo africano que dá origem a uma série de circunstâncias sobrenaturais nos enredos, como uma lembrança constante: em África, os espíritos estão por toda a parte, mantendo intensa relação com os vivos. Em torno da questão, a tese discute o fato de parte da crítica classificar a obra por gêneros como o Realismo Mágico, o Maravilhoso e o Fantástico. Também são investigadas as estratégias narrativas deste autor, suas opções regulares na composição de enredos, personagens, nomes de personagens e epígrafes. Com base nessas marcas e em outros traços comuns a todos os seus romances talvez presentes igualmente em seus contos descobre-se a adequação entre a criação de um sistema de pensamento dicotômico, que atravessa a obra, e estruturas frasais que revelam algo significativo: os romances de Mia Couto são propositivos, especialmente quando convidam o leitor ao movimento constante de questionamento de suas próprias certezas

'Pues tanto se esconde': Elusion at (inter)play in Ana Caro's El conde Partinuplés

El conde Partinuplés (first published 1653) is one of only two extant plays written by the Sevillan poet/dramatist Ana Caro Mallén de Soto (‘la décima musa sevillana’). Despite McKendrick's dismissal of the play as ‘extremely bad’, it has been the object of substantial critical scrutiny since the 1970s, impelled in great part by the production of modern editions (Luna and Delgado) and by Kaminsky's bio-biographical study (1973). Two responses have dominated: analysis of the play's imaginative reconceptualization of source material (most notably the Classical myth of Cupid and Psyche as contained in Apuleius and transmitted via the anonymous French chivalric romance Portonopeus de Blois; and more contemporary models, such as Calderón's La vida es sueño); discussions of the play from a gender/feminist perspective. There is some inevitable entanglement in these approaches, areas of ideological concurrence, but also of contradiction. This article will offer a critical synthesis of these lines of enquiry around an analysis of the play's patterns of non-identical repetition and, following Hubert's theory of ‘double movement’, will move beyond these to consider the generative and potentially transcendent nature of the interplay of inscription (text) and transcription (interpretive performance). A subversive strategy of elusion underpins this interference, a dynamic, mobile frame within which ‘envidia’ (‘celos’) functions as a prominent dramatic catalyst, directed outwards, and mobilized both as a potent catalyst for the female dramatist's artistic creativity and as an antagonistic interrogation of broader socio-cultural forms of inequality. The play's (new) marvellous versions and inversions expand the functions of the sign beyond Renaissance resemblance and repetition, challenging its promotion of unity and stable identity, and opening up an interactive space between the represented (world/product) and the representing (stage/process). The power of authorities, as figured in/through the dramatic and rhetorical devices of the play, is self-consciously precarious, but it is this very anxious articulation that challenges the very authority of power.