DAVIES, Robertson
Canadian novelist, journalist and playwright (1913-1995)
The deceptively gentle, expansive tone of Davies' satires belies their extraordinary subject-matter: it is as if Jane Austen had reworked Rabelais. Davies' books are comedies of manners, many set in small university towns riven with gossip and pretension. Tempest-tost (1951) is about an amateur production of Shakespeare's The Tempest all but sabotaged by the unexpected, lacerating love of the middle-aged leading man for the girl who plays his daughter. A Mixture of Frailties (1958) describes the chain of bizarre events after a woman leaves money to educate a girl in the arts, unless and until the woman's son sires a male heir. The Deptford trilogy (1970-75) begins with the throwing of a stone-filled snowball, and spirals out to cover three 20th-century lives, interlocking in a dazzling, bizarre mosaic, involving medieval (and modern) saints, big business, Houdini, Jungian analysis, touring freak-shows and a barnstorming company of travelling actors.
THE 'CORNISH' TRILOGY (1982) The books in this trilogy, about members of the wealthy, eccentric Cornish family, are The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone and The Lyre of Orpheus. Hovering over the events, as puppeteers loom over marionettes, are guardian angels, devils and spirits of medieval mischief; we humans are not alone. Alternate chapters of The Rebel Angels are told by Father Darcourt, a professor of Biblical Greek at a small, Roman Catholic, Canadian university, and Maria Magdalene Theotoky, a research student. The university is a quiet place, dedicated to placid scholarship and barbed common-room gossip. But Ms Theotoky is researching Rabelais, and the plot suddenly erupts with priceless manuscripts, bizarre lusts, devil worship, scatology, and a storm of passion and deceit against which no grove of academe could stand unbowed. What's Bred in the Bone is the life-story of Francis Cornish, art expert, multi-millionaire, wartime spy and loner, whose search for himself, and for love, is hampered by his guardian devil Maimas. The Lyre of Orpheus tells of the recreation, in 20th-century Canadian academe, of a lost Arthurian opera by the devil-inspired 19th-century romantic composer E.T.A. Hoffman. The style in all three books is urbane, placid narrative, but the contents are sown with mines. If Jane Austen rules the tone of Davies' early trilogies, in this one Rabelais keeps blowing raspberries.
The books in The Deptford Trilogy are Fifth Business, The Manticore and World of Wonders. Davies' other novels include Murther and Walking Spirits and a third trilogy, in a similarly urbane and hilarious vein, set in a small Ontario university town, The Salterton Trilogy. The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks and Marchbanks' Almanac are collections of humorous journalism, and Davies' plays include A Jig for the Gipsy, Hunting Stuart and the political satire Question Time. Happy Alchem is a posthumous collection of his engaging, erudite writings on theatre.
READ ON
Robertson Davies, A Leaven of Malice
To The Rebel Angels : Anthony Burgess, Enderby's Dark Lady David Lodge, Small World
To What's Bred in the Bone : Richard Condon, Any God Will Do Thomas Mann, The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man
To The Lyre of Orpheus : D.J. Enright, Academic Year Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution
To Davies' work in general : Peter Ackroyd, English Music John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany Aritha Van Herk, No Fixed Address
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