|
|
Seminar 13:
|
|
James McAuley, who died in 1976, has a reputation as a pre-eminent Australian poet, public intellectual, editor and academic. He was also a Catholic with strong, often highly combative views regarding Australian society and the church. McAuley is also one half of the notorious Ern Malley persona, along with Harold Stewart. Most late twentieth-century academic readers of McAuley place him as an arch-conservative, someone under the sway of B. A. Santamaria and of the religious and intellectual 'Right'. That view short-circuits debate about the complexities of the man, and of his public and poetic work. This seminar will focus mainly on the poetry, particularly the lesser known, poignant and richly symbolic late poetry, written in the years leading up to his death. It will offer a reading of 'the man' whose outspokenness, intellectual activism and poetic vision make him a chameleon presence in the Australian cultural landscape.
|