91É«ÇéƬ

Abstract

How do we recover the vital past from the ordered present? This paper examines the cross-continental and temporal parallels and the unexpected resonance between Judith Wright’s twentieth-century activism for Australia’s First Nations people and D. H. Lawrence’s late-career engagement with the pre-Roman Etruscans. The study argues that Wright’s advocacy for First Nations' land rights and Lawrence’s fascination with the Etruscan spirit and attitude to life represent a shared resistance against the flattening effects of colonial and imperial hegemony. Attention is devoted to the manipulation of memories: how state-sanctioned histories erase local multiplicities to justify central power. Developing a bridge of ecological and cultural pluralism. Wright and Lawrence aren’t just looking at these cultures; they are letting the influence flow back into the present.

Bio

Stefania Michelucci is Full Professor of English Studies and World Literature at the University of Genoa, Italy and a member of the European Academy of Science and Arts. She has written extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors from an interdisciplinary perspective, with particular attention to the relationship between literature and the visual arts. She has been Visiting Scholar and has lectured in many universities across the world, including UC Berkeley and UC Davis (USA), Kyoto Tachibana, Keio and Konan University (Japan), NUAA (China), UFRJ (Brazil), and the University of Zululand (South Africa). She was granted a JSPS Fellowship in 2014 and a JSPS Bridge Fellowship in 2024. She is currently editing a collection for Edinburgh University Press on Thom Gunn, with interviews, memoirs, and unpublished material from the archives.