Cirrus@Austlit

'The book challenges the myth of the neutrality and detachment of the scholar. Its strength lies in its dynamic, engaging and passionate participation in the meeting of texts and words of different genres, geographical areas and cultures, in the pluralistic diversity of the themes explored, in its fundamental and creative relations with ecosophy, ethnophilology, ecofeminism, system theory and ecolinguistics. It brings together renowned international scholars to focus on postcolonial, ecocritical, mythical, and archetypal studies of literature, education and its partnership mediation, applied linguistics and plurilingual education.' (Publication summary)

'This volume in memory of Laurence Hergenhan is a collective demonstration of affection and gratitude for the kind and wise man he was and for all the wonderful things he accomplished in Literary Studies. He taught generations of students how to study in depth, sharing the finesse of literature and showing us how friendship, warmth and creativity are gifts to be cherished at all times and across countries. To honour the bountiful generosity of his life and work, the first section of this volume collects critical essays by prominent scholars, colleagues and friends who had an enriching and long-standing relationship with him. The second part of this volume gathers personal appreciations, stories and memories.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This book is the fruit of Antonella Riem's thirty-year study of Australian literature and is inspired by the work of anthropologist and social scholar Riane Eisler that the international Partnership Studies Group (founded by Antonella Riem in Udine in 1998) applies to the study of world literatures in English, languages and education. The texts analysed in this book represent an interesting sample of how different Australian authors of diverse epochs share a desire to denounce the dangers of colonial/dominator/imperialism while representing another more human and caring possibility, a different, more partnership-oriented world-view.' (Publication summary)

Malouf’s ecological concerns and interest in the natural world and their relationship with the cultural can be traced in most of his works, both in prose and poetry. Space and place such as the wilderness and the garden, the steppe and the Roman Empire, the Australian bush and the city are fundamental elements in Malouf’s delineation of individual, social, political and cultural relationships with the land. This article focuses on “Jacko’s Reach” (Malouf 2000), where, under the label of progress, globalisation is enforcing the development of a local natural place. Jacko’s Reach, “our last pocket of scrub”, will be destroyed by “mechanical shovels and cranes”, to build “a new shopping mall” (93), deceptively advertised as a necessity for the benefit of the community. The narratorial voice on the surface describes a usual event, the building of a new shopping centre, and at the same time criticises the destruction of the natural world for the sake of progress, which leads to the annihilation of
wilderness in order to domesticate and acculturate it. This article focuses in particular on Malouf’s narrative strategies, which, more relevantly, emphasise the mythological power of the imagined or remembered place as a form of resistance to the devastation of the natural environment. In “the dimension of the symbolic” (99), through memory, imagination, creativity and dream, the total erasure of wilderness – in both the natural world and ourselves – cannot be fully achieved. Constantly re-imagined and re-configured in our memory, it will be forever “pushing up under the concrete” (99), and “in our head” (100), in a profound visionary and creative interconnectedness between the natural world and the human being.

This essay takes into consideration some of the themes dear to Veronica

Brady’s heart and present in her profound critical analysis of Australian literature. Veronica often read Patrick White’s work in the light of a spiritual quest and a mystical-mythical vision. Aim of this essay is to investigate how the figure of the aunt, in The Aunt’s Story (1948), embodies one of the isolated and visionary characters in White’s work who transmits a message that superficial contemporary society is unable to understand. I will show how Theodora Goodman’s role as explorer in the inner land of the Self connects her with ancient partnership (Eisler 1987), Goddess’ archetypes, in particular that of the Crone, embodying a “woman of age, wisdom and power” (Bolen 2001). This figure had an important but now forgotten role in ancient gylanic societies (Eisler 1987). Theadora, the Goddess’ gift, as the protagonist’s name should read, is a powerful reminder of the sacred spiritual function of ancient

women-priestess. Theodora is Theadora, a priestess beloved by the Goddess. Contemporary society, being unable to see beyond the ordinary, can only catalogue these sacred figures as ‘mad’.

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'Il corpo, lo spirito e la parola creativa sono elementi particolarmente significativi nell’opera di David Malouf: il suo linguaggio immaginativo e poetico dà voce alle sfumature più sottili della vita, rivelandone sia la dimensione spirituale sia quella creativa. La mia analisi si basa sul lavoro dell’antropologa e storica Riane Eisler e sulla teoria della parola creativa in contrapposizione al termine scientista di Raimon Panikkar. Nella presente analisi, utilizzerò le prospettive interculturali e di partnership proprie del lavoro di Panikkar e di Eisler come base filosofica e critica al fine di evidenziare in che modo Malouf dia forma ad un mondo di epifanie spirituali, in cui le realtà della vita quotidiana sono trasmutate in una dimensione spirituale attraverso l’intensità dell’immaginazione creativa.'

'Body, spirit and creative word are significant elements in David Malouf’s work: his imaginative and poetical language gives voice to the subtleties of life, revealing both their spiritual and physical dimensions. My analysis is based on the work of the anthropologist and macro-historian Riane Eisler and on Raimon Panikkar’s theory of the creative word versus scientistic term. I will use the intercultural and partnership perspectives of Panikkar and Eisler’s work as a philosophical and critical background to show how in his work Malouf gives form to a world of spiritual epiphanies, with the realities of everyday life transmuted into a spiritual dimension through the intensity of the creative imagination.' (Publication abstract)

'Preamble: This paper originates from an interdisciplinary non-binary critical approach, which applies Riane Eisler's (1987) partnership model to World literary texts. By analysing the works of authors writing in the varieties of English, including those of Indigenous populations where the dynamics at work are caring and sharing rather than exploiting and dominating, the coloniser's word is explored in its creative potential to transform the dominator values of colonisation and globalisation into cooperative and partnership codes. More specifically, as Raimon Panikkar points out, the modem degeneration of 'the word', stripped of its dialogical power and reduced to a mere term, has a devastating effect, for it becomes a simple transferring of notions, devoid of a deeper meaning. (Panikkar 2007)

'The creative word operates within a co-operative system of values that differs from the dominator model, which is tied to the Westernised scientistic and technical term. In this discussion, Eisler's partnership/dominator continuum along with Panikkar's theory of the spirit of the word will be applied in order to focus on the power of the mythical and archetypal word of the Aboriginal guides Dugald and Jackie in Voss. Here 'the word' is seen giving expression to a multitude of Aboriginal oral traditions, narratives and myths operating within analogical frameworks, rather than logical ones, and including silence as a form of creativity and communication, thus manifesting its full symbolic and poetic power as expression of a partnership approach to life. ' (Introduction)