![marcus mug](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/marcus-mug-1-1.png)
The Full Texture of Literary Life
Literary critics in the 1960s and 1970s, following the lead of the Leavisites and the American New Criticism, analysed texts in their own terms by disregarding their background and context. “How many children had Lady Macbeth?” was considered the irrelevant question critics who couldn’t distinguish between a literary creation and real life asked. Australia’s blockbuster convict-bushranger novels, Kingsley’s Geoffry Hamlyn, Clarke’s His Natural Life and Boldrewood’s Robbery under Arms, for example, were assessed primarily on their “literary merits”.
Michael Wilding was foremost among those who reacted against this self-denying ordinance. Why not investigate the background and historical context of such wonderful imaginative creations to elicit new insights into their magic? In the eleven essays on Marcus Clarke’s life and times and literary creations reproduced here in Marcus Clarke: Novelist, Journalist and Bohemian, Wilding takes us into the heart of…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins