Review of L'Universo Terra in 'Voss' di Patrick White by Antonella Riem, and The Labyrinths of the Self by Antonella Riem

Abstract

Riem's largely Jungian view of the text in L'Universo Terra, in which she detects many archetypes and necessary opposites and dualisms, places her work particularly in line with Peter Beatson's book The Eye in the Mandala and with David Tacey's Patrick White: Fiction and the Unconscious. Tacey, like Riem, emphasizes the role of the Mother, though from a different angle. Riem's tendency to find large patterns in Voss makes her work analogous to that of most critics of White in recent times, particularly those who have written book-length studies. Where she differs from many of them is in her more optimistic and less critical attitudes to the text.