University of Windsor Scholarship at UWindsor Electronic Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Major Papers 8-13-1966 Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano": A critical reception study. Paul J. Black University of Windsor Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd Recommended Citation Black, Paul J., "Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano": A critical reception study." (1966). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 6415. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/6415 This online database contains the full-text of PhD dissertations and Masters’ theses of University of Windsor students from 1954 forward. These documents are made available for personal study and research purposes only, in accordance with the Canadian Copyright Act and the Creative Commons license—CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works). Under this license, works must always be attributed to the copyright holder (original author), cannot be used for any commercial purposes, and may not be altered. Any other use would require the permission of the copyright holder. Students may inquire about withdrawing their dissertation and/or thesis from this database. For additional inquiries, please contact the repository administrator via email ([email protected]) or by telephone at 519-253-3000ext. 3208. NOTE TO USERS Page(s) not included in the original manuscript and are unavailable from the author or university. The manuscript was scanned as received. 42 This reproduction is the best copy available. ® UMI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. MALCOLM LOWRY’S UNDER THE VOLCANO ; A CRITICAL RECEPTION STUDY BY PAUL J. BLACK A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies through the Department of English in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts at the University of Windsor Windsor, Ontario 19 66 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: EC52596 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 EC52596 Copyright 2008 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 E. Eisenhower Parkway PO Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Approved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT Under the Volcano, a novel by Malcolm Lowry, first appeared in 1947. It met with mixed critical reception ranging from wildly enthusiastic praise to peremptory dismissal. After the initial reception little critical attention was paid to the novel for about a decade. During this period, however there were some indications that there existed a sort of "underground” of critical support for the novel. In the early 1960’s there was a burgeoning of Lowry criticism and now the novel is generally acclaimed as a modern masterpiece. This thesis is an exploration and analysis of the critical reception of the novel, primarily in North America, from 1947 to the present. The Introduction deals with the scope of the study and provides background material on both Malcolm Lowry and Under the Volcano. Chapter One of the thesis covers the original critical reception. It is divided into two sections, one treating the more popular critical media, the other exploring the more academic quarterlies. In terms of comparison, a much more healthy picture of the critical scene emerges from the consideration of the popular reviews. Chapter Two covers subsequent reception up to the present. It also is divided into two sections, one ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. examining cue periuu. ox uuuci'grounu critical support ior the novel, the other dealing with criticism of the novel since its emergence as a critically-aclaimed major work of art. In the Conclusion, the picture of the critical scene drawn from the analysis is summed up. It is suggested that a difficult, many-levelled novel might benefit from some kind of explanatory preface, and, finally, the tendency of criticism to become intentional as an author becomes more famous is pointed out. 1 1 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To Eugene McNamara, Ph.D., who first introduced me to the work of Malcolm Lowry, go my deepest thanks for his invaluable assistance as the director of this thesis. To Raymond Smith, Ph.D., and Ralph Nelson, Ph.D., I owe thanks for their critical reading and comments; and to Sally Matheson, thanks for the typing of the manuscript. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .......... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................... iv INTRODUCTION .... 1 Chapter I. THE INITIAL RECEPTION ............................................................ 9 1. Wide-Circulation Book Reviews: 1947 . 9 2. The Quarterlies: 1947 ......... 23 II. EIGHTEEN YEARS OF CRITICISM ............. 36 1. The Road to Recognition: 1947-61 . 36 2. Recent Criticism: 1962-66 ............... 47 CONCLUSION ..... 61 BIBLIOGRAPHY . ............. 65 VITA A U C T O R I S ....................... 68 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION This thesis is essentially a chronicle of the passage of a novel, Under the Volcano, from its publication in 1947 to the present; from a point where it was deemed worthy by some of only token consideration, where it was damned by many with faint praise, occasionally lauded— but sometimes for the wrong reasons— to the point where a growing consensus finds it worthy of the most exacting and detailed scholarly attention. Within this framework some tentative conclusions will be drawn about the critical scene in general, and about the critical fate to which a first novel, and a complex one, may be predestined. The conclusions must be tentative because, although there is no such thing as very rapid change in the critical scene as far as new fiction reviewing is concerned, some change does occur: the impact of the appearance of a new and influential wide-circulation perio­ dical such as the New York Review of Books on the critical scene would make a study all of its own. Frank Kermode has suggested that: If critics have any reason for existence this is it: to give assurances of value and to provide somehow— perhaps anyhow— the means by which readers may be put in possession of the valuable book.V ■■^"William Golding," in _0n Contemporary Literature, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York, 1964), p. 367. 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 Taking this general description of the function of the critic as a starting point, this study will analyse the t criticism of Under the Volcano in an effort to determine how well or poorly this criticism provides assurances of value, and more important "the means by which the reader is put into possession" of the book— the extent to which the critic delivers the book to the reader. Insofar as judging and assessing criticism of a novel is concerned, it is this latter function of the critic that must receive the closest attention. An assurance of value is more often than not an expression of taste, and, except in extremes, difficult to comment upon. The "delivering" of a work, that is, elucidating, explaining, explicating, relating it to other works, providing the reader with the tools, as it were, to refine and enlarge his apprehension of the work of art, is the most important job of the critic. In the case of Under the Volcano this applies doubly, since it is a complex and many leveled fiction, and there are many different ways in which the reader can be put in possession of the novel. As far as terms of reference are concerned, in this study "critic" and "reviewer" should be taken as synonymous although in general those who wrote about the novel on its first appearance will be termed reviewers, those who wrote about it later, critics. The job of the reviewer is of the same nature as the job of the critic, to provide assurances of value and elucidate the work, though the degree to which emphasis is placed on either part of the task may differ. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 This study will be confined mainly to the critical reception of the American edition of the novel, though a limited amount of criticism of the English edition, where such criticism is generally accessible to the North American reader, will be included. Although the novel has been translated into numerous foreign languages— French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, Polish and Portugese being some of them— material related to translations or commentaries on translations of the novel will be used only if it is connected with a review or critique from the body of criticism under primary consideration. The scope of the analysis is not exhaustive; not everything that has been written about Under the Volcano will be examined. However, with the exception of reviews in the daily popular press— and it should be noted that this does not include weekly book review sections such as those in the New York Times and Herald Tribune— the study of the critical reception in North America will be almost complete.