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The Evolution Op the Hero: a Comparative Study Op the Novel in Canada

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The Evolution Op the Hero: a Comparative Study Op the Novel in Canada THE EVOLUTION OP THE HERO: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OP THE NOVEL IN CANADA by Thomas E. Parley Thesis presented to the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, of the University of Ottawa as partial ful­ fillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Ottawa, Canada, 1986 Thomas E. Farley, Ottawa, Canada, 1986. UMI Number: DC53733 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI® UMI Microform DC53733 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT OP The Evolution of the Hero; A Comparative Study of the Novel in Canada This study examines the development of fictional heroes in Canada's founding cultures over the past century as part of a continuing search for a "national" hero-figure. Using models derived from Joseph Campbell's Primitive Myth­ ology and The Hero with a Thousand Faces ad a frame of ref­ erence, the study identifies fictional protagonists as either Preservers ol Tradition or Agents of Change, figures incorporating the elements of continuity and change in the process of evolution. The hero's acquisition of "Canadian" traits and attitudes is described in terms of his changing "world-view" as this concept is used by Jean-Charles Palardeau in "1'Evolution du heros dans le roman quebecois." Organized thematicaily and chronologically, the study presents the hero's development through six chapters which correspond to stages in the maturation of an individual as identified by the activities of imitation, the rejection of imitated models, the discovery of new models, the testing of identity, the reshaping of beliefs and the confrontation of death. The significant fading of referential models in later chapters is examined as part of a movement toward the complex heroes of Postmodern literature. ABSTRACT The study concludes that, despite superficial sim­ ilarities, Canadian novels in French and English represent two distinct and separate literatures, the result, on one hand, of a growth-producing dialogue rooted in the idea of la patrie. and on the other, of an extended monologue of fidelity to ideals imported from abroad. Consequently, although the French-Canadian novel presents a hero closely akin to the spirit of the American Adam and Australia's "Wild Colonial Boy," Canadian literature as a whole has not produced a national hero figure. Nevertheless, since the evolution of the hero is a continuing process, Canadian literature may yet produce the encompassing metaphor from which such a hero might emerge. CURRICULUM STUDIORUM Thomas E. Parley was born January 14, 1917, in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. He received the Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton University, Ottawa, in 1949, and the Master of Arts degree from the same in­ stitution in 1963. The title of his thesis was "Love and Death in Canadian Poetry." He received the Master of Education degree from the University of Ottawa in 1974. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis was prepared under the supervision of Professor Camille R. La Bossiere, of the Department of English and Professor R£jean Robidoux of the Departement des lettres franchises of the University of Ottawa. CONTENTS er page INTRODUCTION 6 CRITICAL PATHS AND HERO MODELS 31 DECLINE OP THE ROMANTIC HERO 67 THE HERO AS WARRIOR 105 AXES AND SUICIDES 140 REMODELLING MYTHOLOGIES 190 HEROES OP APOCALYPSE 241 CONCLUSION 276 BIBLIOGRAPHY 279 INTRODUCTION As the title of this dissertation suggests, new literatures, like new societies, do not burst into life fully grown. Their gradual unfolding is influenced by many factors, including a heritage of mytha and heroes whose adaptation to new conditions involves more than physical growth and may be seen as stages in a process of evolution. Such a process is more subtle and complex than development from province to statehood, as the noted historian A. R. M. Lower observed in 1958: Growth into nationhood in the sphere of culture is a much longer and more intricate process, one much harder to see, usually a much more tantaliz­ ing one, than the mere acquirement of political •, independence. •*• Some notion of why Canada's questionable "nationhood" does tantalize Canadians and puzzle visitors may be gleaned from the special supplement on Canada in The Atlantic of November, 1964, in which Canadians assess the state of the nation one hundred years after the Charlottetown Con­ vention. John Conway asks "What is Canada?" and replies that it is a century-old experiment that failed. Brian Stock, a scholar in England, analyzes why young men leave and concludes that it is because Canada provides no patria. 1 Arthur R. M. Lower, Canadians in the Making (Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company, 1958), p. xix. INTRODUCTION 7 no Zeitgeist, no great literature and no soul. Gerard Pelletier discusses "The Trouble with Quebec," while Marcel Faribault asks "Can French Canada Stand Alone?" All these Canadians share the perplexing vision of a nation that may or may not exist. In that same number or The Atlantic. Douglas LePan links the dilemma or Canadian authors with the idea of "representative man": No one can tell yet what mask to carve for Canada, which type to choose—a pulp savage or a bank teller, a civil servant or a broke hustler or a signalman helping to keep the peace in Cyprus or the Gaza Strip—whether the face should be serene and adventurous or withdrawn and introspective. No one can tell for certain yet whether Canada is 2 one nation or two. Such insight is central to an understanding of cultural growth in any age or country. The Importance assigned to representative heroes in the nineteenth century shines in Carlyle's Heroes. Hero-Worship. and the Heroic in History (1841) and Emerson's Representative Men (1850). The aim of this study, however, is not to trace or promote the emula­ tion of historical figures. Nor is its chief concern with the origins of the hero (as in Lord Raglan's The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama,/J9367), or hia limits 2 Douglas V. LePan, "The Dilemma of the Canadian Author," The Atlantic. CCZIV (November 1964), 160-64. INTRODUCTION 8 in history (aa in Sidney Hook's The Hero in History /19437), or a taxonomy of his types (as in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism /19677), though it recognizes a debt to all of these. The focus of this study is the fictional hero-figure, who may begin as part of the cultural baggage brought by a young society to a new land but who is altered in response to new conditions and new needs until he is both a product and a representative of his society. One thinks of the American frontiersman and the Australian bushranger of the 18008, who run so strongly through their respective litera­ tures and who developed into national myths in response to national need. For more than a century, heroes in the Canadian novel have served a similar need, preserving, remodelling and symbolizing a growing sense of what it is to be Canadian. Though Canadian literature cannot boast such encompassing 3 national figures as the American Adam and Australia's 3 R. W. B. Lewis, in The American Adam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), states that "The new habits to be engendered by the new American scene were suggested by the image of a radically new personality, the hero of the new adventure: an individual emancipated from history, happily bereft of ancestry • . standing alone, self-reliant and self-propelling, ready to confront what­ ever awaited him with the aid of his own unique and inher­ ent resources. It was not surprising, in a Bible-reading generation, that the new hero (in praise or disapproval) was most easily identified with Adam before the Pall" (p. 5). INTRODUCTION 9 "Wild Colonial Boy,"4 the search for a figure representative of society, which underlies and shapes the hero in so many Canadian novels, raises a further question which this study will address: May not a comparative study of the hero also illuminate the unity or disunity, growth or decay, character and direction of Canadian literature? Viewing literature and its heroes as a process de­ veloping through stages is not new in Canada. "Each author is an 'heir of the ages,'" states Lionel Stevenson in his Appraisals of Canadian Literature (1926), "and it is imposs­ ible to imagine a literary masterpiece appearing full-blown without this evolution having preceded it."^ Lome Pierce places French and English authors "side by side" in An Outline of Canadian Literature (1927) and insists that "Hereafter they must share equally in any attempt to trace the evolution of our national spirit." In the field of 4 J. P. Matthews, in Tradition in Exile (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962), describes Jack Dowling, "The Wild Colonial Boy," as the most famous of the bush- ranging outlaws subsumed into the figure of a nationally representative hero in the nineteenth century and rendered internationally popular in the twentieth as the "Swagman" of Banjo Paterson's ballad, "Waltzing Matilda" (pp. 165-77). 5 Lionel Stevenson, "A Manifesto for a National Literature," in Canadian Anthology, eds. Carl Klinck and Reginald Watters (Toronto: Gage, 1974), p.
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