The Australian National University Humanities Research Centre Annual Report 1988

Director: Professor C.I.E. Donaldson, BA Melb., MA Oxf., FAHA, FBA Deputy Director: Professor G.W. Clarke, BA Oxf., MA NZ & Melb ., Litt.D. Melb.,

FAHA Research Officer: Dr J.C. Eade, MA St And. & Adel., PhD ANU

Visiting

Visiting

Fellows: Prof. J.C. Barker, BA Camb., M.Div. Yale, PhD Tor. Professor R. Cardinal, BA, MA, PhD Camb. Professor M. T. Cartwright, BA, PhD Exe., DU Aix-Marseilles Professor D.A. Cressy, BA, MA, PhD Camb. Dr J. Dollimore, BA Keele, PhD Lond. Professor E.L. Eisenstein, AB Vassar, MA PhD Radcliffe Professor J. Fletcher, MA Camb., PhD Toulouse Mr P.R. Hardie, BA, MA Ox[., MPhil. Lond. Dr Douglas Kelly, BANZ, MA Auck., MA, PhD Camb. Professor F. Kermode, MA Liverp., FBA Em. Professor H.C. Knutson, MA Minnesota, PhD UCI.A Dr Kate Lilly, BA Syd., PhD Lond. Professor R. B. Parker, BA, MA Liverp .. , PhD Binn. Dr D. B. Rose, BA Delaware, MA, PhD Bryn Mawr Professor A.J. Sambrook, BA, MA Oxf., PhD Nott. Professor D. Simpson, BA, MA, PhD Camb. Dr Margaret Stoljar, BA, MA, PhD Melb. Professor J. M. Wallace, BA, MA Camb., PhD Johns Hopkins Professor Max Wilcox, BA, MA Melb., PhD Edinb. Professor Zhu Hong, BA Beijing

Scholars: Dr Hugh Craig, BA Syd. , DPhil. Oxf. Dr Richard Freadrnan, BA Brandeis, DPhil. Oxf. Professor A.J. Hassall, BA UNSW, PhD Monash Professor Heath Lees, BMus, MA Glasg. Dr Satendra Nandan, BA Delhi, MA Leeds, PhD ANU Ms J. Strauss, BA Melb. Dr J. E. P. Thomson, BA, MA Oxf. & NZ, PhD Otago

Conference Visitors: Professor Timothy Barnes, BA, MA, DPhil Oxf. Professor Averil Cameron, MA Ox/, PhD Lond., FBA Dr Mireille Corbier, DU Professor Keith Hopkins, MA Camb., FBA

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Dr Richard Saller, BA lllin., PhD Camb. Professor Susan Treggiari, BA MA Oxf.

'Terra Australis to Australia': 14-25 August

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During the last fortnight of August 1988 the Australian Academy of the Humanities, in collaboration with the Humanities Research Centre and other bodies, held a large conference in Sydney and Canberra entitled Terra Australis to Australia'. The inspiration for this meeting came from the HRC's 1981 year on 'Australia and the European Imagination'. A number of fonner HRC visitors returned to Australia this year to participate in the meeting, which was organized by former HRC Visiting Fellows Dr Alan Frost of La Trobe University (co-convener of the HRC's 1981 conference) and Professor John Hardy (ANU/Bond University).

Many other Bicentennial conferences and activities were held throughout the country in the course of the year. In order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, on the one hand, or distracting major competition, on the other, the HRC resolved not to nominate a special theme for 1988, but organized instead a number of smallish, specialized meetings, two of which concentrated upon the work of distinguished scholars from overseas. This was the Centre's first 'themeless' year since 1976: it represents an occasional, not a permanent, departure from the HRC's by now well-established mode of operation.

'Use or the Past Seminar': 20-22 May

This Seminar explored use of the past in a wide range of Greek and Roman literature in late antiquity, although most of the papers were concentrated within the span of the fourth to sixth centuries A.O. Naturally enough history writing came in for special study: Amrnianus Marcellinus (Timothy Barnes, 'Literary Convention, Nostalgia and Reality in Ammianus Marcellinus'), Procopius (Katherine Adshead, 'Procopius' Polioretica: Continuities and Discontinuities'), Malalas (Elizabeth Jeffreys, 'Malalas' Use of the Past'; Roger Scott, 'Malalas, Theophanes and the Past'), together with City Chronicles (Brian Croke, Toe City Chronicles of Late Antiquity'). In these papers a constant theme was the changing perspecitves on the past as well as the role of models of the Oassical past in writing about more contemporary reality. And the allied sub-genre of Church History and its functions also came under close scrutiny (Alanna Emmett Nobbs, 'Philostorgius' View of the Past'; Pauline Allen, Toe Use of Heretics and Heresies in the Greek Church Historians: Studies in Socrates and Theodoret'). Theories of History also figured (Raoul Mortley, Toe Hellenistic Foundations of Ecclesiastical Historiography'; Gary Trompf, 'From Augustine to Salvianus: the Logic of Retribution in Christian Historical Reflection in the Latin West'). But other literary forms less directly connected with history-writing yielded valuable insights into the constant reviewing of the past from present perspectives. This illuminating process was exemplified in hagiography (Cynthia Stallman, Toe Past in Hagiographic Texts: S. Marcian of Syracuse'; Peter Brennan, "The Military Past in Hagiography'), in panegyric (Ted Nixon, 'Panegyrists and the Past') and in biography (Averil Cameron, 'Looking

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back to the Fathers: Models of the Past in the Late Sixth Century'). During the course of the Seminar Professor Timothy Barnes, its special guest, gave a public lecture on 'The Career of Athanasius'. Altogether nearly seventy people attended what proved to be a lively, enjoyable and highly profitable long week-end. It is planned to publish a volume of papers from the Seminar.

'Roman Family ii: Marriage and Children': 15-17 July

The second 'Roman Family' conference sponsored by the HRC drew approximately twice as many participants as the first one (1981). This reflects the recent development of this field of ancient social history.

The numbers registered (65) were too large for the fully participatory seminar originally envisaged, but, in spite of this, the precirculation of substantial papers made for lively and informed discussion. There were eleven papers, from scholars working in six different countries; four were from Australia. Respondents were almost all from Australia or New Zealand, thus giving participants from this area a real involvement in proceedings. One of the papers was delivered as a public lecture, in the evening, in conjunction with University House.

It was agreed that the study of 'the Roman family' had made much progress since 1981, and even since 1986 when the book which resulted from the first conference was published (The Family in Ancient Rome. New Perspectives, ed. Beryl Rawson). There had been increased interaction with other disciplines, but also an awareness of some of the deficiencies of comparative material and models for understanding 'the family' in Roman society. During this conference there was much discussion of how best to define 'the Roman family' and how to take account of the large household while giving due weight to the affective focus on the small conjugal family. Archaeological material played a greater role this time, helping to heighten the awareness of the physical, material context within which the family operated. Roman law continued to play an important part, but many stressed the gap between formal law and the realities of everyday life. There was lively controversy about the frequency of divorce and thus its impact on relationships between spouses, half-siblings, and mothers and children. Strategies of inheritance and disposition of property continued to be important, but slaves and children of the lower classes also provided material for family life and social mobility.

Publication of a volume based on material presented at the conference is under consideration.

Frank Kermode Seminar: 2-4 November

The seminar in honour of the distinguished literary critic Professor Frank Kermode concentrated on some of the issues raised by his most recent book, History and Value, whose Australian publication was timed to coincide with the meeting. What forces help to fashion our sense of a literary canon, and an historical period such as the nineteen thirties? Why do we choose to value cenain books from the past, and to ignore others that were perhaps much prized in their day? The seminar opened with

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a well-attended public lecture on the evening of Wednesday 2 November by Professor Kermode on T.S. Eliot, Cities, and Exile', and continued over the next two days with another lecture by Frank Kermode, on 'Derrida and Endings', and further papers by Penny Boumelha (University of Western Australia), Sneja Gunew (Deakin University), Ian Hunter (Griffith University) and Ivor Indyk (University of Sydney). A panel discussion (Marion Campbell, Melbourne; Simon During, Melbourne; Kevin Hart, Deakin; and Ian Donaldson HRC) concluded the Seminar. It was convened by Professor K.K. Ruthven and Ms Marion Campbell of the University of Melbourne.

Visiting Fellows 1988

Professor John Barker (Department of History, Trent University; March-August) was a joint visitor with the Department of History in the Faculty of Arts . He worked on the twentieth-century search for significant themes in Australian history, and on a study of leading American historians. He visited the University of Queensland in August.

Professor Roger Cardinal (Literary and Visual Studies, University of Kent at Canterbury; April-June) pursued his interest in the twin areas of modem poetry and painting, particularly the Primitive in modem art and Natural Signs as perceived and interpreted by several European poets. He visited the University of New South Wales, the University of New England, the University of Melbourne, and the Australian Defence Force Academy. He also made a tour of three New Zealand universities (Massey, Auckland, Wellington).

Professor Michael Cartwright (French, McGill University, Montreal; April-July) continued his investigation of the illustration of the medical sciences and its interaction with the theories and practice of the visual arts in the eighteenth century. In June he visited Sydney University.

Professor David Cressy (History, California State University, Long Beach; May-August) worked on Celebration and Commemoration in Elizabethan and Stuart England. He visited the universities of Sydney, La Trobc, Adelaide, and Western Australia.

Dr Jonathan Dollimore (English and American Studies, University of Sussex; January-March) was engaged on a study of sexuality and sub-cultures in the Renaissance and the twentieth century. He visited the universities of Sydney, New South Wales, and Newcastle.

Professor E.L. Eisenstein (History, University of Michigan; January-March) was working on the press and politics in late eighteenth-century France. In February she attended the conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for

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Medieval and Renasissance Studies, and she also visited Melbourne and Monash universities.

Professor John Fletcher (Comparative Literature, University of East Anglia; January-May) was a joint visitor with the Faculty of Arts. He worked on popular fiction, especially the historical novel. He visited Macquarie, New South Wales, Melbourne, Tasmania, Griffith and New England.universities.

Mr Philip Hardie (Classics, Magdalene College, Cambridge; July- September) worked on a study of post-Virgilian epic and a commentary on the Aeneid, bk 3; also on Plutarch's use of myth and allegory. He visited the universities of New England, Sydney, Monash, and Western Australia.

Dr Douglas Kelly (Department of Oassics, ANU; August-November) worked on . the politics and social history of ancient Greece.

Professor Frank Kermode (October-November) was the chief participant in a Seminar held in his honour. This was organised around the theme of his latest book, History and Value.

Professor Harold C. Knutson (French, University of British Columbia; September-November) continued his research on comparative drama (French-English and French-Italian) and, more generally, on theatre as a reflection of ideology.

Dr Kate Lilley (Junior Research Fellow in English, St Hilda's College, Oxford; July-September) worked on the relations between genre, gender and ideology, especially with reference to 17th-century women's writing, and on a book on Australian poetry. She visited the universities of Melbourne and Sydney, and also recorded a feature programme on seventeenth-century women writers for the ABC's Radio Helicon.

Professor R. Brian Parker (English and Drama, University of Toronto; June-August) worked on his edition of Shakespeare's Corio/anus for the Clarendon Press, and made a study of contemporary Australian Drama, to become a part of a Toronto course on Commmonwealth Drama in English. He visited the universities of Queensland, New South Wales, and Newcastle, and the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Dr D.B. Rose (Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies; February 88-January 89) was working on an Aboriginal history of a portion of the Northern Territory and editing a book on Australian Aborigines and Christianity.

Professor A.J. Sambrook (English, University of Southampton; January-April) worked on a critical biography of James Thomson. He visited the University of New South Wales and the University of Western Australia.

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Professor David Simpson (English, University of Colorado, Boulder;June-August) centred his research on on the political and philosophical debate about rational method in the period after the French Revolution.

Dr Margaret Stoljar (Modem European Languages, ANU; February-June) was working on a study of the reception of European literature in colonial Australia. She organised a series of fortnightly seminars on Critical Theory and Arts held in the Centre, to which Professors Fletcher, Cardinal, Cartwright and Simpson and Dr Lilley all contributed.

Professor John M. Wallace (English, University of Chicago; September-October), whose visit was cut short by illness, was working on Coriolanus and Seneca's De Beneficiis.

Professor Max Wilcox (School of History, Philosophy & Politics, Macquarie University; January-April) worked on Jesus in First-Century Jewish Society.

Professor Zhu Hong (English and American Literature, Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; April-June) was working on a joint project in four volumes, British Fiction Studies, of which she is the General Editor. She visited the University of Newcastle, and gave a talk to the ANU's Contemporary China Centre.

Visiting Scholars

Dr Richard Freadman (University of Western Australia; January-February) worked jointly with a colleague in Philosophy on a book that will contain Critical Essays on Contemporary Literary Theory.

Professor A.J. Hassall (English, James Cook University; February- June) worked on Australian fiction, completing the first draft of a book on Peter Carey . .

Professor Heath Lees (School of Music, University of Auckland; December 19.87-March 1988) worked on a book concerning Music and Modernism. and on the relation between music and the French Symbolist poets. He visited the University of Queensland.

Dr Satendra Nandan (Formerly Senior Lecturer, University of the SPuth Pacific and Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Coalition Government of Fiji; December 1987-May 1988) was working on the writings of V.S. Naipaul and on an autobiographical piece on Fiji Indians and the military coup.

Mrs Jennifer Strauss (English, Monash University; February-July) continued her work on the representation of the artist in Australian poetry.

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Dr John Thomson (English, Victoria University of Wellington; March-June) worked on his contribution to the forthcoming Oxford History of New Zealand Literature, and on a history of the theatre in late 19th-century New Zealand.

As is the custom each of the Centre's Visiting Fellows and Visiting Scholars this year delivered a paper in the Centre's Work in Progress series.

Starr Report

The Director spent the first six months of the year on Outside Studies in the United States. From January until May he was Visiting Professor at Cornell University, attached to the Department of English and the Society for the Humanities; from June to early July he directed an advanced seminar on 'Ben Jonson in his Age' for the Folger Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. At Cornell he delivered the first David Nov arr Lecture at the invitation of the English Department, the Society for the Humanities, and the Renaissance Colloquium. He lectured at the University of Chicago for the Department of English and the Division of the Humanities; at the Californian Institute of Technology, in the Division of Humanities; for the English Department and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles; for the Departments of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University; and at Princeton University for the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies and the Department of English. He spoke at a conference on The Institutional Impact of Institutes' held at the University of California's newly-established Humanities Research Institute at Irvine, and visited the Departments of English at the Santa Barbara and Berkeley campuses of the University of California. He worked throughout the year on his biographical study of Ben Jonson. Back in Canberra, he taught for the· ANUs Department of English, supervised graduate students from several Departments, and chaired the national committee of the Arthur Boyd Australian Centre in Italy and the Advisory Committee of the Australian National Dictionary Centre.

The Deputy Director continued his research on early Christianity in the Roman world, preparing chapters on this subject for the second edition of the Cambridge Ancient History (Volumes X and XII), collaborating with Mr R. Barnes on a book on the theme of Hellenism and Judaism in Early Christianity and preparing a translation of and commentary on the letters and fragments of Dionysius the Great, Bishop of Alexandria. He taught regularly for the ANU's Department of Classics, supervised graduate work for that Department and gave two public lectures, one to the Canberra Archaeological Society and one to the Friends of the Classics Museum (ANU) on archaeological work in North Syria as well as a seminar on Hellenism and Judaism in Early Christianity in the ANUs Department of Classics (with Mr R. Barnes). Professor Clarke served on a number of University committees; he chaired the Library Committee, was a member of the Faculties' Promotion Committee, and was alternate member of the Faculties' Research Fund Committee. He continued as a member of the Council of the Australian Institute of Archaeology in Athens and as

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Treasurer of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (serving also on many of the Academy's sub-committees--Publications, Finance, Language, Library etc.). He was also a member of the national committee of the Arthur Boyd Australian Centre in Italy. During the year Professor Clarke co-led another archaeological season's dig in North Syria, worked on several articles and reports based on this work, provided two entries for the forthcoming Anchor Bible Dictionary, and saw through the press two books, a volume of papers on Rediscovering Hellenism: The Hellenic Heritage and the English Imagination, for Cambridge University Press as well as TheL etters of St. Cyprian, volume IV: Letters 67-82, for the Paulist Press. He was especially involved in the running of two of this year's conferences in the Centre, the Timothy Barnes Seminar on Use of the Past (May) and the Roman Family Seminar (July).

The Research Officer continued his duties as first point of contact with the Centre's Visitors as regards their library and research requirements (increasingly their requirements for word processing), and also had general executive charge of the Centre's printing and publications. He assisted the Deputy Director in the editing of Rediscovering Hellenism (Cambridge University Press) and was also involved in the preparation for the press of Greek Colonists and Native PopulaJions (Oxford University Press).

In January he visited Thailand collecting material for the project Southeast Asian Calendrical Systems, of which he is a joint member with Drs A. Diller and B. Terwiel of the ANU. In November Peter Lang of Frankfurt published his monograph, Aristotle Anatomised: the 'Poetics' in England, 1674-1781.

After nearly twenty-five years of service in the ANU and twelve years as Secretary of the HRC, Miss Mary Theo resigned in July of this year, as she was marrying and moving from Canberra The Centre owes her a large debt of gratitude for all she has done over the years; we thank her warmly, and wish her every happiness in her new life. It is hoped that her successor will be appointed before the end of the year. In the meantime Mrs Pearl Moyseyenko and Mrs Jodi Parvey have been ably looking after the office. Dr W.S. Ramson has continued to chair the Centre's Steering and Advisory Committees. The HRC records its thanks to these and all others who have contributed this year to the efficient running of the Centre.

Plans for 1989

Two main conferences have been organised for the year, on the subject Film and the Humanities. Of these 'Coming to Terms with the Photographic Image', will be held in July and will consider the evolving relationship of film imagery to history, art, and literature. The second conference, in September, will be on 'Film and Representations of Culture'. and will explore selected themes as they have been dealt with in both film and literature. In April the Centre will be holding the Quentin Skinner Seminar. 'Political Discourse in Early Modem Europe'.

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Publications:

*CHUNG Chong-wha

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The Anthology of Modern Korean Poetry, East West Publications, London, 1986.

CLARKE, G.W. Funerary Inscriptions near Joussef Pasha, North Syria, Abr-Nahrain 26 (1988) 19-29 and Plates 1-7.

*DEAN, William 'The Date of The Widow's Tears: An Allusion to the Case of Post-Nati (Calvin's Case), 1608', Notes & Queries, March 1988, 59-ro.

*DOCKER, John 'In Defence of Popular TV: Carnivalesque v. Left Pessimism', Continuum, 1,2. (1988), 83-99.

DONALDSON, Ian 'Eucalyptic Visions' in symposium Through Foreign Eyes', The Cambridge Review (December 1987), 152-3.

"'A Double Capacity": The Beggar's Opera', in Modern Essays on Eighteenth-Century literature, ed. Leopold Damrosch, Jr., New York & Oxford, 1988, 141-58 (reprinted from The World Upside-Down, 1970).

'Concealing and Revealing: Pope's Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot', in Pope, Swift, and their Circle, special number of The Yearbook of English Studies, ed. CJ. Rawson assisted by Jenny Mezciems, 18 (1988), 181-99.

EADE, J.C. Aristotle Anatomised: the 'Poetics' in England, 1674-1781, Frankfurt, 1988.

'Computer Dating for some Southeast Asian Inscriptions', Proceedings of the International Conference on Thai Studies (Canberra, 1987), 3/1, pp. 77--80.

*ELLIOTT, R.W.V. 'Hardy's One-Plane Dictionary', The Thomas Hardy Journal, 4(3 (October 1988),

29-47.

*GUTHKE, Karl S. B. Traven: Biographie eines Riitsels, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1987.

*HASSALL, A.J. 'Quests', eh. 24 of the Penguin New Literary History of Australia, ed.L. Hergenhan, Penguin Books, Australia, 1988.

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(with J.F. Burrows), 'Anna Boleyn and the Authenticity of Fielding's Feminine Narratives', Eighteenth-Century Studies, Summer 1988, pp. 427-453.

*HERZFELD, Michael Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass, Cambridge, 1987.

*NIALL, Brenda Martin Boyd: a Life, Melbourne University Press, 1988.

*PARKER, Reeve 'Reading Wordsworth's Power: Narrative and Usurpation in The Borders', EU/, 54, 2 (Summer 1987), 299-331.

*Plill..LIPS, Michael 'The Composition of Pope's Imitation of Horace, Satire II. f, in Alexander Pope: Essays/or the Tercentenary, ed Colin Nicholson, Aberdeen University Press, 1988, pp. 171-93.

ROSE, Deborah Bird (ed. with Tony Swain), Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions, Australian Association for the Study of Religions, Adelaide, 1988.

'Jesus and the Dingo', loc. cit., pp. 361-75.

*RUNIA, David 'Philosophical Heresiography: Evidence in the Ephesian Inscriptions', Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 12 (1988), 241-4.

*SHAFFER, Elinor Erewhons of the Eye: Samuel Butler as Painter, Photographer and An Critic London, 1988. ·

*SHERIDAN, Susan Christina Stead, Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1988.

*SMILES, Sam 'Turner in Devon: Some Additional Information concerning his Visits in the 1810s', Turner Studies (Summer 1987), 11-14.

*THORNTON-SMITH, Colin, 'S.T. Gill and Hubert de Castella', Explorations, no. 6 (September 1988), 3-8.

• Fonner Member; publication based on work done in the Centre: not previously cited.