AustLit

In her Afterword to Antonella Riem’s magisterial A Gesture of Reconciliation, Riane Eisler – whose ideas provide much of the theoretical framework for Riem’s analyses – calls the book “a paean to the power of the creative word as a path to understanding and transformation” (212). In literary criticism we are used to seeing testaments to “the power of the creative word” (though perhaps less so now than in the past), and there is always the assumption, if not the outright declaration, that this leads to increased understanding. Knowledge and understanding, after all, are the coins of our particular realm. But except for manifestly polemical works, we don’t usually regard criticism as a path to transformation. And yet that is exactly what motivates Riem’s work, and has for over twenty years now, since she founded the Partnership Studies Group in Udine in 1998. As she says in her Introduction, “poetry, narration, music, and all other forms of art have a relevant role, because they influence our world-view and therefore our present and our future, and can even reconfigure our past beliefs and transform our lives” (12). Moreover, “if we consciously choose to focus our attention on peace, beauty, love, harmony, and art, this is what we creatively activate in our lives” (12). Literature, therefore, can help remake our world by changing us.' (Introduction)