AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
-
The trial scene, Act II.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Related Works
-
y
The Chapel Perilous, Or, The Perilous Adventures of Sally Banner
Frank Arndt
(composer),
Michael Leydon
(composer),
Sydney
:
Currency Press
,
1972
8274485
1972
single work
musical theatre
(taught in 7 units)
Written in Hewett's freewheeling epic style, The Chapel Perilous is a journey play that spans the period between the 1930s and the late 1960s. The story concerns Sally Banner, an over-reacher who attempts to find fulfilment – whether through her gift of poetic expression, through her sexual relationships, or in later years through political activism - and ultimately finds it through self-acceptance. Thematically the play contains the qualities and concerns which are often associated with Hewett's style – female sexuality, questioning of authority and morality, and anarchic tendencies towards structure in both dramatic text and social attitudes.
As Hewett remarks in her 1979 Hecate article: 'Sally is balanced by several symbolic female figures, the "Authority figures" of Headmistress, Anglican teaching "sister", and mother... [along with the] lesbian love figure, Judith, who stands for intellectual control and denial of sensual love' ('Creating Heroines in Australian Plays', p. 77).
Works about this Work
-
The Hedge and the Labyrinth. A Holistic Vision of Dorothy Hewett´s Poetry
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 9 2012; 'Dorothy Hewett´s poetry follows a complex architecture, a structure which encompasses her personal beliefs and the guiding lights that consciously and unconsciously led her life, while it also draws and deploys core elements from the literary tradition of Western culture. The primary image that pervades her poems is the garden, which is either the place where many of her poems occur or a significant component in others. Hewett´s garden retains several of the characteristics of the primordial garden, such as innocence, abundance and placid solitude, but it also partakes of its Romantic nuances, which, after all, are the same as in Eden but enhanced by feeling and intensity. The garden as literary locus sets the pace of Hewett´s poetry in that it links myth-making with literary tradition, the pillars that sustain the body of her poetic reality. This triangle, myth, tradition and reality, incorporates the main topics that the Australian writer inscribes in her work, and, while each corner retains its thematic substance, it also reflects the other two, thus giving unity to the whole poetic process. As Bruce Bennett pointed out as early as 1995, "place, appropriately conceived, is a meeting ground of mental, emotional and physical states and as such is a suitable focus
for the literary imagination" (Bennett: 19).' (Author's introduction)
-
The Hedge and the Labyrinth. A Holistic Vision of Dorothy Hewett´s Poetry
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 9 2012; 'Dorothy Hewett´s poetry follows a complex architecture, a structure which encompasses her personal beliefs and the guiding lights that consciously and unconsciously led her life, while it also draws and deploys core elements from the literary tradition of Western culture. The primary image that pervades her poems is the garden, which is either the place where many of her poems occur or a significant component in others. Hewett´s garden retains several of the characteristics of the primordial garden, such as innocence, abundance and placid solitude, but it also partakes of its Romantic nuances, which, after all, are the same as in Eden but enhanced by feeling and intensity. The garden as literary locus sets the pace of Hewett´s poetry in that it links myth-making with literary tradition, the pillars that sustain the body of her poetic reality. This triangle, myth, tradition and reality, incorporates the main topics that the Australian writer inscribes in her work, and, while each corner retains its thematic substance, it also reflects the other two, thus giving unity to the whole poetic process. As Bruce Bennett pointed out as early as 1995, "place, appropriately conceived, is a meeting ground of mental, emotional and physical states and as such is a suitable focus
for the literary imagination" (Bennett: 19).' (Author's introduction)
