The Australian Association of Writing Programs

Cecil B. de Mille 

Rather against his will                       

Was persuaded to leave
Moses                  

Out of the Wars of the
Roses

It’s arts festival season
in Perth and I find I’m too busy reading, watching and listening to get round
to much writing. But, I remind myself, this is an important part of the
creative cycle. Can’t put out with nothing put in. So I will draw my bow along
an ‘e’ string (some might call it a long bow), away from an e-word familiar to
all writing post grads, towards another e-word: from the epic public spectacle
back to the private journey of epic proportions that is the postgraduate writing
course.

The epic is characterised
by its grand proportions, is multiplicity, its lofty tone and aspirations, its
stock phrases. It is often concerned with the big themes of history, conflict
and love. Modern epics may be characterised by these things or their deliberate
inversion, which to a certain extent is the same thing. With its grand scale,
it is easy to get lost in an epic. Their appeal is generally massed too, at
least, that is usually the intention. In epics, more is more.

This week I saw Sydney
Theatre Company’s Perth International Arts Festival commission The War of
the Roses. This epic cycle consists
of most of Shakespeare’s history plays – Richard II, Henry IV (parts 1 and 2),
Henry V, Henry VI (1, 2 and 3) and Richard III – packed into eight hours over
two nights. It was all there – love and war, the regal and supernatural,
numerous characters and episodes, faithful and unfaithful history, vernacular
phrases in their original (??) context, eloquent speeches, famous speeches,
infamous speeches… and tons of glitter, blood and goo of other colours.

I had not inconsiderable
expectations for this epic experience and swatted up the week leading to the
show, making notes from synopses and drawing lists of characters into the rival
houses of York and Lancaster. My partner, not to be outdone, drew a complicated
family tree. These tools were an invaluable part of my enjoyment and considered
important enough that the Company’s program notes also offered much material to
guide the audience through the epic.

The epic form seems to me
perennially popular, and perhaps sits behind the increasingly common contention
that the modern novel as we’ve known it is losing ground to the DVD box set;
see, for example, James Bradley’s piece in the February edition of The
Australian Literary Review, ‘The idiot box grows a brain’.

These long televisual sagas
are usually watched in the privacy of one’s home, at one’s chosen pace, and
always come with a variety of ‘extras’, which may be as simple as a regular
break-down into series, episodes and chapters, with menus to navigate them, and
get much more complex: synopses, language options, interviews, making-ofs,
interactive on-screen guides… These materials are influential and help the
creators manage how one reads the story, by offering historical credibility,
for instance.

My PhD was an epic journey
that could never be adequately reflected in the final product; I’m not at all
sure I’d want the epic reflected in the final product. But, the framing of
postgraduate studies in writing provides an opportunity to manage the reading
of our epic journeys through the provision for an exegesis. I’ve always felt
this is in fact a series of frames, like Chinese boxes or Russian dolls: the
exegesis can map the creative component, the introduction is a guide to the
relationship of the pair, the abstract points to the introduction and the
cataloguer’s requirement for key terms are drawn from the abstract. This
infinite regress gives a strong sense of trajectory and it is in these framing
devices that one can manage one’s audience, which at the very least will
include one’s examiners. At the same time, I think this trajectory works both
ways, and the line we stretch from beginning to end (straight or curved, direct
or weaving) can sit like a template and make suggestions. The exegesis informs
our readers just as our self-generated maps, lists and guides (literal and
figurative) inform our epic journey.