In our ongoing Guide to the Classics series, we look at Heart of Darkness: the product of dark historical energies that continue to shape our contemporary world.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Guide to the Classics
Displaying 61 - 80 of 82 articles
In its abridged form, Gulliver’s Travels has become a children’s classic. But in full, it is a misanthropic satire, scathing of politicians.
Dream of the Red Chamber, by Cao Xueqin, follows the travails of a pubescent boy. Somehow, through the spats, crushes and rivalries of a handful of teenagers, the great questions of the human condition are broached.
Sappho sang of desire, passion and love – mostly directed towards women. As new fragments of her work are found, a fuller picture of her is emerging, but she remains the most mysterious of ancient poets.
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is often acclaimed as the best novel ever written. The enthralling narrative explores love and family through intertwining plot lines, with Anna and her desire at the centre.
Journeys to the Underworld – Greek myth, film and American anxiety
The Conversation36.9 MB (download)
Our new podcast, Essays On Air, features the most beautiful writing from Australian researchers. Today, classics expert Paul Salmond explores how modern cinema directors borrow from Greek legends.
Suetonius’s unforgettable tales of sex, scandal, and debauchery have ensured that his writing has played a significant role in shaping our perceptions of imperial Rome.
Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid documents the founding of Rome by a Trojan hero. As with other ancient epics, our hero has to remain resolute in the face of significant divine hostility.
The gates to hell in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy tell us to “abandon all hope, yet who enter here”. Despite its unfunny premise, ‘La Commedia’ ends well, with its protagonist Dante reaching heaven.
The story of the Odyssey is a quintessential quest that relates to the passage through life and the importance of love, family and home. Odysseus’s adventures have influenced everyone from Batman to Bob Dylan.
A central idea in the Iliad - a poetic work focused on the war for Troy - is the inevitability of death. The poem held a special place in antiquity, and has resonated in the millennia since.
As populism reemerges, Thucydides’s insights into the power of words to influence public sentiments remain acutely up-to-date.
From environmentalism to the meaning of life, the themes of the world’s most ancient epic are still remarkably relevant to modern readers.
With a new TV series based on the novel - and its bleak vision of women’s rights - The Handmaid’s Tale is riding a new wave of popularity.
American Gods imagines a US where ancient gods exist at “right angles to reality”, asking why we have mythologies and why we need them.
The Melling sisters — like Alcott’s March sisters and Austen’s Bennetts — are four girls who become women during the course of Robin Klein’s trilogy of novels. The Sky in Silver Lace is the most bittersweet of the three.
Hunter S Thompson’s 1971 book is a torpedo ride through some of the strangest scenes in American fact, or fiction. It’s about greed, the souring of ‘60s idealism, the failings of journalism and much more.
The tale of a married woman who joins her lover in Paris, The Beauties and Furies is a modernist classic. Like Joyce’s Ulysses, the action is concentrated in one city, but dreams are nightmarish in this city of night, not light.
There are calls for Ovid’s Metamorphoses to be taught with a trigger warning. This 15-book epic is a rollercoaster of a read, with moments of both delicious joy and abject depravity. Like much great art, it was not created to please.
Family feuds, love affairs, empire writing back to the motherland - the medieval Icelandic saga have it all. Though less known than other classics of European literature they richly deserve a place among the best.
Top contributors
-
Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Sydney
-
Emeritus Professor of Classics, La Trobe University
-
Associate Professor in Philosophy, Australian Catholic University
-
Professor, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney
-
Lecturer in Literary Studies, Monash University
-
Honorary Professor, The University of Queensland
-
Honorary Associate, Classics and Ancient History, La Trobe University
-
Lecturer, the School of Liberal Arts, The University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong
-
Associate Professor in Writing Studies, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney
-
Associate Professor of Classics and Head of the Centre for Classical Studies, Australian National University
-
Professor, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
-
Associate Professor in Chinese Studies, University of Sydney
-
Postdoctoral research fellow in English, University of Sydney
-
Associate Professor in Australian Literature, University of Sydney
-
Professor in Writing and Literature, Deakin University
