Literature

As Kate mentioned here, A Mixture of Frailties is the book where Robertson Davies finally, firmly made the shift from dramatist to novelist. Not to get all “no true Scotsman” on you, but I think, given how his next eight novels play out, a case can be made that A Mixture of Frailties is the first “true” Robertson Davies novel. That’s not exactly the case I’m going to be making here, but this will be setting the pattern for most of the remainder of these books. In my comments on Tempest-Tost I discussed the first of the three elements Davies brings together in constructing the identities of his aristocracy of the spirit: self-knowledge. In my discussion of Leaven of Malice I discussed the second element: the conceit. I’m not certain I was clear in how conceits fit in to the framework I’m talking about, as I also spoke about how… Continue Reading →

I wrote in my discussion of Tempest-Tost that I was interested in tracing the development of Davies’ system of identity construction through all eleven of his novels, and that Tempest-Tost offered insight into the first of what I believe to be the three major elements of that system: the kind of self-knowledge achieved by his élite, the aristocracy of the spirit (I was perhaps not entirely clear that, while it takes a number of factors for Davies to elevate a character to that aristocracy, it is his or her self-knowledge that is of chief importance). In that first volume, Davies presents us mostly with characters who have already managed the trick of fully constructing their identities, and so we are largely only capable of seeing the end result, not the process or the tools. For Davies identity is like a jewel; it must be cut before it can be said… Continue Reading →