Metaphors of Identity Crisis in the Era of Celebrity in Canadian Poetry Joel Deshaye Department of English McGill University, Montreal February, 2010 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Joel Deshaye, 2010 Library and Archives Bibliothèque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l’édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-68478-8 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-68478-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L’auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant à la Bibliothèque 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 télécommunication ou par l’Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, électronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L’auteur conserve la propriété du droit d’auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author’s permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformément à la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privée, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont été enlevés de thesis. cette thèse. 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. Table of Contents Acknowledgements i A Note on the Text ii Abstract iii Résumé iv Introduction . 1 I. The Metaphor of Celebrity . 11 II. The Era of Celebrity in Canadian Poetry . 55 III. Becoming “Too Public” in the Poetry of Irving Layton . 87 IV. “I like that line because it’s got my name in it”: Celebrity and Masochism in Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen . 147 V. The “Razor” and the “Jungle Sleep”: Celebrity and Legend in Michael Ondaatje’s Poetry and Coming Through Slaughter . 219 VI. The Passing as / of Celebrity in Gwendolyn MacEwen’s The T.E. Lawrence Poems and Other Works . 305 Conclusion . 379 Works Cited 395 i Acknowledgments I wish to thank my supervisor, Professor Brian Trehearne, whose scrupulous attention to the writing and argument of this dissertation was indispensable. His guidance during my five years at McGill University often heartened me. I am also indebted to Professor Robert Lecker for his instruction, inspiration, and mentorship. My coursework, too, with Professors Ned Schantz, Thomas Heise, and Monique Morgan provoked and informed some of the claims in the following chapters. The success of this dissertation would not have been possible without these excellent teachers. I would also like to thank the members of my examining committee for their work on my behalf. Without the support of my family and other students at McGill, I might have lacked the necessary determination to complete my work. I wish especially to thank Michael Lee, Robin Feenstra, Liisa Stephenson, Caroline Krzakowski, Margaret Herrick, and Gregory Phipps. My parents, Mary and Lloyd, fostered me all my life and I will always be grateful for their love and other help. Lastly, this dissertation would not have been possible under the given constraints of time without the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and McGill’s Department of English and its knowledgeable staff. The fault of any error or omission is mine alone. ii A Note on the Text Because the Modern Languages Association has yet to provide a guideline for documenting short poems in volumes that also contain prose poems, and because I want to remain consistent in documenting both forms of poetry, I have resorted to using only page numbers in my citations in the following chapters. Many academic journals that publish poetry use page numbers rather than line numbers. Very few of the poems quoted in this dissertation are much longer than a page, so the reader will not have difficulty finding the lines in question if only a page number is provided. Contrary to the suggestion of the recent edition of the MLA’s handbook, I have continued to use ellipses in square brackets to show where I have elided quotations (except at the beginning of lines, where square-bracketed changes to capitalization indicate a truncation; at the ends of lines, some truncations occur when the sense of the quotation’s source can remain unaltered); this is partly to distinguish them from ellipses in the original, though such ellipses rarely occur. Square brackets also indicate changes to capitalization, and using square brackets around ellipses allows me to be consistent with my other editorial alterations to quotations. Other small, consistent differences from MLA format might also appear in the following chapters. iii Abstract This dissertation is about representations of celebrity in poetry written in English by Canadian authors from around 1955 to 1980. These years span what I call the era of celebrity in Canadian poetry. During that era, four poets who experienced celebrity also wrote about it in their poetry: Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, and Gwendolyn MacEwen. Although the degree of celebrity differed for each poet, they all wrote seriously about its consequences. For Layton, celebrity threatened his freedoms of expression and self-definition. Cohen was also concerned about freedom but implied that celebrity was slavery to which masochists submitted themselves. Ondaatje’s interest was in both celebrities and legendary figures who tried to resist the public’s judgement of their sexuality and race. MacEwen extended this criticism of celebrity by commenting implicitly on the general exclusion of women from celebrity in Canadian poetry. In addition to analysis of poetry and historical argument, this dissertation claims that celebrity is literary, because the invasion of privacy that celebrities often experience is the enactment of a metaphor: the private is public. Celebrity depends on a system of media and various aspects of culture, but it also often involves variations on this metaphor, as in the identity formation of celebrities who create personas to help manage their publicity. Through these personas, they sometimes engage in performances of masculinity and religiosity that help to establish the exclusivity of celebrity. This exclusivity is an aspect of the category of “the literary,” but celebrity is not only literary in that sense; it also involves metaphor, and writers are therefore some of its best critics. iv Résumé Cette thèse se préoccupe des représentations de la célébrité dans la poésie canadienne anglaise d’environ 1955 à 1980—ce que j’appelle l’ère de la célébrité dans la poésie canadienne. Au cours de cette ère, quatre poètes ont également vécu et écrit à propos de la célébrité dans leurs poèmes: Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, et Gwendolyn MacEwen. Bien que le degré de célébrité soit différent pour chaque poète, ils ont tous écrit à propos des conséquences sérieuses de celle-ci. Pour Layton, le coût de la célébrité était la liberté d’expression et d’auto-définition. Cohen était également préoccupé par la liberté mais insinuait que la célébrité était un esclavage auquel les masochistes se soumettaient. Ondaatje a représenté la légende afin de détourner le regard du public et de résister au jugement publique de la sexualité et la race des vedettes. MacEwen a étendu cette critique en commentant implicitement sur l’exclusion générale des femmes de la célébrité dans la poésie canadienne. En outre à l’analyse de la poésie et d’un argument historique, cette thèse affirme que la célébrité est littéraire parce que l’invasion de la vie privée que les vedettes peuvent vivre est elle-même une métaphore: le privé est publique. La célébrité dépend d’un système de médias et divers aspects de la culture, mais la formation de l’identité des vedettes dépend aussi de la métaphore. Ils créent des personnages ou masques et s’engagent dans des performances de la masculinité et de la religiosité qui les aident à établir l’exclusivité de la célébrité. Cette exclusivité est un aspect de la catégorie du ‘littéraire,’ mais la célébrité n’est pas seulement littéraire dans ce sens; elle implique aussi la métaphore, et les écrivains sont, par conséquent, certains de ses meilleurs critiques. 1 Introduction I am ashamed to ask for your money. Not that you have not paid more for less. You have. You do. But I need it to keep my different lives apart. Otherwise I will be crushed when they join, and I will end my life in art, which a terror will not let me do. —Leonard Cohen The focus of this study is on poetic texts written by celebrities during what I call the era of celebrity in Canadian poetry—around 1955 to 1980. This era, though relatively brief, was in the course of Canadian literature in English a dramatic change. By the beginning of the 1960s, poetry was extraordinarily popular; favourable conditions in the publishing industry, recent convergences of other media, and Irving Layton’s example and selective encouragement helped to make celebrity available to poets.