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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY He'll: Parody in the Canadian Poetic Novel by Nathan Russel Dueck A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH CALGARY, ALBERTA NOVEMBER, 2009 © Nathan Russel Dueck 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-64097-5 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-64097-5 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. •+• Canada Abstract This dissertation considers literary parody as reading in performance. If we accept that parody reads its source texts, we also acknowledge the potential for a performative reading of these sources. Literary parody is not only citation, but a process of recitation as well. If so, parodic fiction that recites poetry embodies the structure, style, and tone of its source texts. I will attempt to examine the poetics of this performance trope through a particular form of parody. By parodying the cadences and intonations of poetic language, the "poetic novel" invites readers to enact the gestures of its textual performance. If literary parody reads its sources, I propose that any subsequent act of reading constitutes rereading. Rereading a poetic novel requires that we must interpret the discursive ambiguity, even ambivalence, of poetry. In effect, poetic novels operate through apostrophe both to source texts and to readers. Such a rhetorical address relies on our identification with the pathos provoked by the self-referential qualities of poetic language. Supposing that parody is an occasion for reading in performance, the poetry within specific prose narratives affords a performative opportunity. As its title suggests, this dissertation will relate the implications of parody to narratives by particular poet-novelists in Canada that cite and recite poetry. I will consider how parody manipulates literary conventions by looking at theories by Linda Hutcheon, Margaret Rose, and Robert Phiddian. I will perform a close reading of poetic novels by Leonard Cohen and Michael Ondaatje; Margaret Atwood, Jane Urquhart, and Anne Michaels; Robert Kroetsch; and finally, Malcolm Lowry. ii "He'll" strives to embrace the ironies of parody that alternately asserts or subverts literary conventions, while simultaneously encouraging disjunctive readings of several poetic novels. in Acknowledgments It seems significant that the last words I will write for this dissertation are the first words you will read. I would not have reached the end - or the beginning, depending on how you look at it - of this project without the care and consideration of many people. The number of you who supported my research, writing, and rewriting surpasses my count. I count on so many of you. My parents, Harold and Beverly Dueck, demonstrate daily how patience differs from indulgence, and confidence differs from self-righteousness. You have taught me that what I do for a living matters less than how I do it. Similarly, my brothers, Steven and Clinton, have reminded me why I should do what I do. Although you are both younger than I am, I often look to you for guidance. You have proven how a good education, or an education in goodness, does not require a degree. Without the encouragement of my supervisor, Aritha van Herk, I would not know what it means to read "assiduously." Thanks for putting your red pen to my work - and for pushing the pen through a page or two - to show me when my assumptions were getting in the way of communicating my ideas. I am indebted to Harry Vandervlist and to Pamela McCallum for serving on my dissertation committee. Your constant patience, and your occasional provocation, has led me to this point. I am also grateful that Linda Hutcheon served as the external examiner on my defense. Thank you for the opportunity to prove my ideas to you (because your writing inspired so many of them). iv Sometimes it seems to me that David Foster and I share one mind. If so, you have put your faculties to better use than I do. Your knowledge and, more importantly, your generosity, exceed my descriptive abilities. Thanks. And, as for Sharon Seabrook: you tune my heart through all my grey "intellectual" static. v For Sharon vi Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Dedication vi Table of Contents vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER TWO: "Death Style" of Parody: On Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers alongside Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient 45 CHAPTER THREE: Parody in Historical Fiction: On Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, Jane Urquhart's The Whirlpool, and Anne Michaels's Fugitive Pieces 96 CHAPTER FOUR: Robert Kroetsch's Verbal Parody 152 CHAPTER FIVE: Malcolm Lowry's Churrigueresque Parody 195 CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION 247 WORKS CITED 257 WORKS CONSULTED 274 vn 1 INTRODUCTION Rereading Parody in the Poetic Novel Connect nothing: Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers Any attempt to read those two words involves teasing out their contradiction, A sense of self-conscious playfulness underlies their act of writing, a sense of insecurity undermines their reference to 'canonical' works, and a sense of uncertainty compromises their ability to signify anything other than language itself. By choosing to indulge these two words, by giving in to critical fallacy, a reader gets a feel for their textual performance, their allusive locution. In rereading "Connect nothing," I will try to articulate a poetics of literary parody as process, a scripted performance space, a discursive practice that engages source texts in a dialogue.1 The success of this performance depends upon the willingness of readers to participate in this dialogue, to play along with the performance. Casting readers within speaking roles, as in drama, implies a rhetorical appeal for our contributions to the text, as in dramatis personae. And we are drawn in. Supposing that literary parody constitutes a performance of reading, it might also contain the potential for a. performative reading. If so, parody is not only citation, but recitation. Fiction that recites the cadences and intonations of poetry bespeaks its Turning to Eco's first footnote in The Open Work will clarify my use of "performance." Eco distinguishes the "practical intervention of a performer" from "an interpreter in the sense of a consumer" {Work 251). He then aligns "both cases ... as different manifestations of the same attitude" (ibid). In other words, reading "represents a tacit or private form of 'performance'" (ibid). I will go on to consider any reading or interpretation as performance: each of us "perform" the text in the course of reading. And, just as no performances are the same, neither are any two readings of a text identical. 2 performative capacity. The self-referential qualities of poetic language generate meaning, but meaning is not absolute; it changes continually as the relationship between the writing and the reader is renegotiated. Whereas poetry requires readers to interpret metaphors by way of their expressive possibility, prose narrative, taken as another mode of expression, involves readers in a comparable process of determining what a story means.2 Literary parody provides a structure for understanding how the novel as a narrative form incorporates non-narrative expressions. Poetry operates within narrative as an aesthetic strategy for calling attention to the development of language in a text, to the moments when language contradicts itself, to the absences within a text, all of which result in an excess of meaning. With this dissertation, I will try to delineate how literary parody operates in several poetic novels by contemporary Canadian writers. I will pursue the possibility that certain English-Canadian writers fluent in the languages of poetry and prose

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