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Title: | To Live in Abundance of Life: A Study of Time in Five Canadian Authors |
Authors: | Cohn-Sfetcu, Ofelia |
Advisor: | Ferns, J. Hutcheon, L. |
Department: | English |
Keywords: | English Language and Literature;English Language and Literature |
Publication Date: | 1981 |
Abstract: | <p>The purpose of this dissertation is to present the treatment of time in twentieth-century Canadian literature as a critical approach able to reveal the increasing complexity and sophistication in the literature of this country. By tackling one of the major themes of modern Western literature -- man's relationship with time -- Canadian authors of this century have indicated that their concern is not only with regionalism and nationalism but also with moral and psychological problems common to all mankind.</p> <p>Fundamental to the critical approach adopted is the idea that twentieth-century literature reflects an interest in the subjective rather than objective aspects of time. The common attempt in prose and poetry to mime a movement away from the objective world into subjective consciousness working in time often blurs traditional genre distinctions to the point of annihilation. Indeed, the works of two poets (Margaret Avison and Al Purdy) and those of three novelists (Frederick Philip Grove, Hubert Aquin and Mordecai Richler) are studied in this dissertation as a single group concerned with internalized, temporal events.</p> <p>The examination of the treatment of time in the works of Grove, Aquin, Avison, Purdy and Richler as presented in five individual chapters reveals a few common points. Aware of the devastating action of time on man, all five authors, in various degrees, favour an orientation of human experience around those subjective aspects of time which seem to reverse or halt the consciousness of life's progress towards death.</p> <p>Despite their emphasis on individual ethics, Grove, Aquin, Avison, Purdy and Richler are not oblivious to man's social responsibility, and, therefore, in their works the meaning of human life is also linked to a notion of love and social engagement.</p> <p>The space about which Grove, Aquin, Avison, Purdy and Richler write is a particular one. But they have been able to distill the particular and the regional in order to extend their themes to a more universal level -- that of the destiny of man facing nature.</p> |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/11375/6330 |
Identifier: | opendissertations/1648 2045 1238315 |
Appears in Collections: | Open Access Dissertations and Theses |
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fulltext.pdf | 10.13 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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