Stranger Cities: Australian Creation and the Ambidextrous Mind, a Profile of Portal Modernity

Download or read book Stranger Cities: Australian Creation and the Ambidextrous Mind, a Profile of Portal Modernity written by Peter Murphy and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-06-19 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stranger Cities explores the metaphysics of Australian society and the clash between its competing strands of romantic culture and classic civilization. The social expression, artistic resonance, economic significance, civic character, historic phases, mythic representations, creative antinomies, and imaginative contribution of these metaphysical fundamentals form the background of Australia’s distinctive urban civilization with its bustling stranger populations, ocean-facing portal cities, revealing art and architecture, and cyclical worlds of markets and industries, war and peace. Murphy portrays a classic eudemonic society whose dominant ethos of phlegmatic happiness vies with a subsidiary current of melancholic and choleric romanticism.