ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SACRED. Rod Jones\u2019 Novel The Mothers (2015)

This essay focuses on Rod Jones\u2019 latest novel, The Mothers (2015), in connection with the sacred archetype of the Great Mother, belied and betrayed by the patriarchal Australian social conventions the author describes with depth of feeling, realistic and historical detail. The Mothers is a feminine saga presenting the interconnected lives of four women of different generations, living in Melbourne, from 1917 to 1990. This essay will show how, in spite of the failure and refusal of patriarchal dominator society to protect maternal partnership relationships, the Archetypal Mother is a relevant spiritual force in most of the women in Jones\u2019 narrative, and in the autobiographical figure of David, the writer-protagonist-narrator of the last part of the novel. The book follows these women\u2019s Songlines with a delicate, thorough and compassionate voice, which also vigorously and resolutely denounces the sorrowful and sad plight they are condemned to, under an insensitive and cold dominator order. Patriarchal society repudiates the sacred feminine in order to control and rule under a hierarchical, absolutist male power. The novel confirms Jones\u2019 maturity and sensitivity as a writer who, with grace and deep understanding, can balance feeling, without falling into sentimentalism, or realism, without the trappings of the documentarist. The novel also successfully expresses the poetry and authenticity of life, while narrating in vivid detail everyday realities

Theodora as an unheard prophetess in Patrick White\u2019s The aunt\u2019s story

This essay takes into consideration some of the themes dear to Veronica Brady\u2019s heart and present in her profound critical analysis of Australian literature. Veronica often read Patrick White\u2019s 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\u2019s Story (1948), embodies one of the isolated and visionary characters in White\u2019s work who transmits a message that superficial contemporary society is unable to understand. I will show how Theodora Goodman\u2019s role as explorer in the inner land of the Self connects her with ancient partnership (Eisler 1987), Goddess\u2019 archetypes, in particular that of the Crone, embodying a \u201cwoman of age, wisdom and power\u201d (Bolen 2001). This figure had an important but now forgotten role in ancient gylanic societies (Eisler 1987). Theadora, the Goddess\u2019 gift, as the protagonist\u2019s name should read, is a powerful reminder of the sacred spiritual function of ancient women-priestess. Contemporary society, being unable to see beyond the ordinary, can only catalogue these sacred figures as \u201cmad\u201d

Lords of Peace, Lords of War: the Master and the Terrorist in 'Child\u2019s Play' by David Malouf

This paper argues that the terrorist embodies a dominator paradigm, exalting and justifying violence, while the Master\u2019s capacity to create through his narratives is attuned to a partnership paradigm. The terrorist\u2019s paranoid, lucid, and terse first person narration of his meticulous (almost religious) preparations for the assassination is set against the intensely poetical creativity of the Master, underlining the beauty and poetry of life. This dialogue between two different modes of perceiving and filtering reality is built around the metaphor of children playing. In a willing suspension of disbelief, the Master, like a child, constructs his own reality in imagining worlds his readers share. The terrorist tries to imitate and mimic his Master, perfectly aware that he is unable to createlike him. The actualisation of his long-imagined violence, which can only annihilate and destroy and is powerless, is his failed attempt at counterbalancing his lack of true creative and dialogic imaginatio

Alchemical Rubedo in Jill Mellick's "The Red Book Hours": Ecosophy on the Spirit

  According to the biocultural partnership-dominator lens as expounded by Riane Eisler, this article studies the echoes and analogies between the opus alchymicum and the instruments of self-growth and transformation found in Jung’s The Red Book and Jill Mellick’s profound, insightful and exquisite The Red Book Hours. Eisler’s method is significantly interrelational and systemic, it supersedes traditional binary oppositions and offers an interesting correlation with alchemy. Mellick’s monumental The Red Book Hours is not only a profound scholarly study of Jung’s own extraordinary Red Book, but also a multifaceted, dynamic and living work which sheds light on the process of Self-analysis as a breakthrough towards wholeness.   &nbsp

Places of the Imagination: Ecological Concerns in David Malouf\u2019s \u201cJacko\u2019s Reach\u201d

Malouf\u2019s ecological concerns and interest in the natural world and their re-lationship 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\u2019s delineation of individual, social, political and cultural relationships with the land. This article focuses on \u201cJacko\u2019s Reach\u201d (Malouf 2000), where, under the label of progress, globalisation is enforcing the development of a local natural place. Jacko\u2019s Reach, \u201cour last pocket of scrub\u201d, will be destroyed by \u201cmechanical shovels and cranes\u201d, to build \u201ca new shopping mall\u201d (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\u2019s 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 \u201cthe dimension of the symbolic\u201d (99), through memory, imagination, creativity and dream, the total erasure of wilderness \u2013 in both the natural world and ourselves \u2013 cannot be fully achieved. Constantly re-imagined and re-configured in our memory, it will be forever \u201cpushing up under the concrete\u201d (99), and \u201cin our head\u201d (100), in a profound visionary and creative interconnectedness between the natural world and the human being. - Nell\u2019opera di Malouf, in poesia e in prosa, \ue8 presente un\u2019esplicita attenzione per l\u2019ecologia e un forte interesse verso il mondo naturale, in particolare nel suo rapporto con quello culturale. Spazio e luogo, come la wilderness e il giardino, la steppa e l\u2019Impero Romano, il bush e la citt\ue0, sono elementi fondanti del modo in cui Malouf delinea i rapporti individuali, sociali, politici e culturali con la terra. Questo articolo si concentra sul racconto \u201cJacko\u2019s Reach\u201d (Malouf 2002), dove, sotto l\u2019etichetta del progresso, la globalizzazione impone lo \u201csviluppo\u201d di un luogo di natura. Jacko\u2019s Reach, \u201cla nostra ultima macchia di vegetazione\u201d, sar\ue0 distrutta da \u201cpale meccaniche e gru\u201d, per costruire \u201cun nuovo centro commerciale\u201d (124), pubblicizzato in modo ingannevole come una necessit\ue0 per il bene della comunit\ue0. La voce narrante in apparenza descrive un evento consueto, la costruzione di un nuovo centro commerciale, e contemporaneamente critica la distruzione del mondo naturale voluta dallo \u2018sviluppo\u2019 che porta alla disintegrazione della wilderness per poterla addomesticare e acculturare. L\u2019articolo si focalizza in particolare sulle strategie narrative di Malouf, che, in modo pi\uf9 rilevante, enfatizzano il potere mitologico del luogo immaginato o ricordato come forma di resistenza alla distruzione dell\u2019ambiente naturale. Nella \u201cdimensione del simbolico\u201d (132), attraverso il ricordo, l\u2019immaginazione, la creativit\ue0 e il sogno, la totale cancellazione della wilderness \u2013 sia nel mondo naturale che in noi stessi/e \u2013 non pu\uf2 essere compiuta del tutto. Costantemente re-immaginata e ri-configurata nella nostra memoria, la wilderness per sempre continuer\ue0 a \u201ccrescere con forza sotto il cemento\u201d e \u201cnella nostra testa\u201d (133), in una profonda interconnessione visionaria e creativa tra mondo naturale ed essere umano

Partnership Studies: A New Methodological Approach to Literary Criticism in World Literatures, Languages and Education

This article briefly describes the innovative research undertaken by the Partnership Studies Group based at the University of Udine (Italy), which, since 1998, has been investigating the possible configurations of a partnership model within contemporary world literatures, language, and education. Partnership Studies draw upon non-binary and trans-disciplinary paradigms as propounded by Riane Eisler, and have been demonstrating their strength and potentialities as epistemological and methodological instruments of transcultural consciousness and awareness, capable of fostering harmonious understanding and relations of reciprocity rather than domination among different cultures