The Free Mind: Essays and Poems in Honour of Barry Spurr

For over forty years, Barry Spurr has created a significant body of work in English literary scholarship, spanning a wide range of fields from Early Modern literature to contemporary Australian poetry. Barry Spurr is acknowledged as a leading scholar in the fields of religious literature and liturgical language, most notably in the works of Renaissance poet John Donne, the Modernist poet T.S. Eliot, and the language and literature of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He was appointed by the University of Sydney as Australia's first Professor of Poetry and Poetics, and holds a notable reputation as a teacher and mentor to students, and as a friend to peers and colleagues. He has also been notable as a public intellectual, with a particular interest in the role of literature in the modern education system, and the role of the humanities in the modern university.

This book is a collection of scholarly papers, contemplative essays and poems, written or contributed in honour of Barry Spurr. The Festschrift's contributors include his former teachers and mentors, his students and colleagues, and includes scholars and public intellectuals in his fields of scholarship or public interest. This Festschrift is a very fine collection of poetry, public discourse and literary criticism, on topics ranging from the works of William Shakespeare, to John Milton, T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Wilfred Owen, in addition to scholarship on liturgical language and religious and literary philosophy.

Contents:

G.A. Wilkes - The Strategy of Shakespeare’s 'Sonnets'

David Brooks - Shakespeare’s Moral Wisdom and Political Insight: Dual Power in 'Coriolanus'

Michael Wilding - Milton’s 'Samson Agonistes': A Political Reading

Bruce Dawe - 'Reading Aloud' (poem)

Beverley Sherry - The Legacy of T. S. Eliot to Milton Studies

Stephen Prickett - Why Study the Humanities?

Simon Haines - On Professing Poetry in Australia in the 21st Century

David Daintree - "Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind": Pagan and Christian Views of Courage

Jonathan Mills - State of the Arts

Stephen McInerney - Four Sonnets - 'The Back Window, Kiama'; 'How Calm The Harbour'; 'A Short Walk At Dusk, Forest of Dean'; 'Were The Window Frosted'

Kevin Hart - Eliot’s Rose-Garden: Some Phenomenology and Theology in “Burnt Norton”

Bradley M. Wells - The Call of Canterbury: The Festival Plays of T.S. Eliot and Charles Williams (1935-1936)

Robert Gray - 'The Sea-Wall' (poem)

Stephen Gaukroger - Knowing Oneself and the Aesthetic Shaping of Character: German Romantic Anthropology

Jennifer Gribble - Do Not Forget: Memory and Moral Obligation in 'Little Dorrit'

Lyn Ashcroft - A Reading of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’

Christine Townend - 'The Lizard' (poem)

David Jasper - Liturgy and Language

Garry W. Trompf - Calumniation and Payback Theory: Wars of Words in the Breakdown of the Warrior Ethos

Ivan Head - Two Poems - 'Pie Apocalypse'; 'The Lark Ascending'

Ivan Francis Head - An Introduction to St Philip Neri

John Bunyan - The Pen of a Ready Writer:The Psalms of Myles Coverdale

John Bunyan - 'Spurred On' (poem)

Carole M. Cusack - The Cultic Milieu in Australia: Deviant Religiosity in the Novels of Carmel Bird

Geoffrey Lehmann - 'Small Child and Art Installation' (poem)

Michael Warren Davis - The Future of the Humanities

Henry Cooper - The Supervisor – Student Relationship

Karina Hepner - O Where Are the Sounds? Inviting Poetry Back into the Lives of Learners

Devika Brendon - 'Imagery for the End of the Day' (poem)

Catherine A. Runcie was a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Sydney from 1969 to 2004, and previously taught at the University of Toronto. Her teaching and research have been in the fields of 19th century literature and thought, literary theory, film adaptation and aesthetics. She was Foundation President of The Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics (1989-1998), Honorary President (1998-2015) and Co-Foundation Editor of the journal, 'Literature & Aesthetics' (1990-1998). She was a visiting scholar at the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Languages in 1981, where she lectured on literary theory and the relation of literature and art in cross cultural movements, and the Xi'an Institute of Foreign Languages in 1993, where she lectured on modernism. She was co-editor of the Festschrift, 'Matters of the Mind. Poems, Essays and Interviews in Honour of Leonie Kramer' (2001).