Yes

In his projected cycle, The Voyage That Never Ends, Malcolm Lowry intended an investigation of the journey undertaken by man's unconscious as he struggles with his basic impulses towards love and destruction, and with his relationships with his fellow-man and God. Lowry designed his cycle of fiction with a structure parallel to that of Dante's Divine Comedy. While this study is also structured according to Lowry's Dantean concept, it does not simply analyse the references to Dante. Lowry's fiction is founded upon a vast and complex network of symbolic and mythic allusion, by which themes are underpinned on numerous levels. Allusions to this body of symbolic material - what is termed the "symbolic legacy" - are also incorporated into the motifs of the author's works. Thus Lowry's references are to no single tradition in literature; the symbols and myths are drawn from numerous sources including the Classical, Mystical/Cabbalistic, Christian and Romantic traditions, and from Modernist reworkings of these traditions. This study, therefore, represents an analysis of the references employed by Lowry, and the relating of the various traditions which are used as sources of allusion. While Under the Volcano contains the fullest exposition of Lowry's symbolic patterning, other works contain further evidence of his endlessly reverberating matrix of symbols. The mythopoeic drive is so strong that often several versions of the same myth or symbol are worked into his fiction. This leads to a contradictory exposition of certain thematic concerns. The antitheses established are integral to Lowry's vision of a complex world in which "civilized" man is endangering both himself and his environment and for whom there exists both the possibility of accepting the downward spiral which has been history and, simultaneously, the means to redemption, according to what he aspires to most.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1994. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2847. Abstract precedes thesis as 5 preliminary leaves. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [93]-96).

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’analyser la représentation de l’excès éthylique dans deux romans du vingtième siècle : Sous le volcan de Malcolm Lowry et Dévadé de Réjean Ducharme. Ce travail de nature comparative se situant à la jonction de plusieurs enjeux épistémologiques et esthétiques, nous proposons d’étudier le rapport à l’alcool à partir d’une herméneutique caractérisée par une distanciation avec les clichés associés à la figure de l’ivrogne tout en concentrant nos efforts à mettre en relief la spécificité de la représentation de l’alcool dans ces textes à différents niveaux d’interprétation. Pour ce faire, le premier chapitre nous permet de mettre en contexte les deux œuvres ainsi que de déposer les bases théoriques de notre méthode d’analyse à partir de deux phénomènes qui s’avèrent complémentaires et indissociables dans les textes à l’étude : l’excès et l’alcool. Par la suite, il sera question dans le deuxième chapitre, à partir de la notion d’anamorphose, de la problématique de la répétition et de ses modalités d’inscription dans les romans. Cet enjeu relié à la répétition permet, par le fait même, de poser plusieurs questionnements et d’interroger les rapports intertextuels à l’œuvre dans les récits ainsi que la logique de dédoublement et de dissolution de l’identité au cœur même de ces deux textes. Le troisième chapitre est l’occasion d’étudier un autre phénomène intrinsèquement relié à la représentation de l’alcool dans le tissu textuel, soit la fragmentation du texte littéraire en fonction de la réfraction engendrée par l’alcool. Nous verrons donc qu’en plus d’installer une esthétique fragmentaire d’un point de vue narratologique, le sens même des récits tend à se disloquer et parfois même à opposer différentes interprétations. L’analyse du quatrième chapitre s’attaque, quant à elle, directement aux digressions en tentant d’établir une logique textuelle à partir du rapport entre le récit et ses interstices digressifs en conséquence de l’alcool présent dans les récits. Une étude du rapport à la réalité fictionnelle ainsi que du statut de l’ivresse comme état de « voyance » dans les textes complète notre analyse de la représentation de l’alcool dans les deux romans.

The aesthetic basis underlying Lowry's work centers around two key ideas, time and memory. Crucial to all of his writing is the need to decipher and to justify the past, both as it is retained in memory and as it recurs in experience. As complex as such a problem is, it becomes more so when neither memory nor experience conforms to the limits or patterns that a conventional view of reality suggests, and accordingly, Lowry required a world-view that could accommodate such apparently irregular phenomena as premonition, coincidence, recurrence and telepathy. This study will examine some of the shapes which reality assumed in Lowry's life, and the means he employed to represent and to understand it through his art. It will also suggest the usefulness of comparing Lowry's approach to existence with the theories of Ortega and J. W. Dunne. The first chapter considers the nature of time and memory in general and looks at some of the specific treatments accorded these subjects in literature. In addition, it examines Lowry's special metaphysical needs and his search through a variety of doctrines and philosophies, primary among which are Western mysticism and occultism and various Eastern beliefs, for some elucidation of his problems. Throughout, it attempts to keep Lowry's efforts in a perspective of contemporary fiction, since the problems of a universal outlook which he faced and the solutions he posed, while individual, are neither as unique nor as esoteric as they might at first appear. Chapter II focuses on some of the solutions Lowry arrived at. It assumes that the disparate body of ideas at work in Lowry's aesthetic can be subsumed, for convenience, within two metaphysical systems--Ortega's philosophy of man and history and Dunne's serial universe. These theories are considered in some detail in an attempt to show that Lowry's conception of the nature and purpose of literary activity parallels Ortega's hypothesis, while his methodology, the execution of his objectives, makes use of serialism. Chapters III and IV analyze Under the Volcano and Dark as the Grave, respectively, in light of the above considerations and try to show how these ideas are operative in Lowry's work both on the aesthetic level, in terms of his approach to literature, and also on the thematic and structural levels within the fictive worlds of the novels. The final chapter is a brief summary, synthesizing Lowry's various conceptions of time, memory, and reality around a general aesthetic theory. It will be seen that Lowry makes free use of a number of different but compatible systems of thought in his writing. Thus the chapter will also consider some of the resultant critical problems which beset his work and the corresponding need, in any evaluation of his art, for critical breadth and flexibility. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how Lowry expanded Under the Volcano beyond the narrative level and yet also managed to infuse this dense, expanded structure with an organic unity. Passages from the earlier drafts of the novel have been juxtaposed with the printed version in order to reveal salient aspects of method and purpose in the novel's composition. Chapter I attempts to demonstrate that Under the Volcano is essentially a lyrical novel and discusses the background and aims of this twentieth century genre. What chiefly distinguishes the lyrical from the non-lyrical novel is that it transcends chronological time, to some degree, and presents a spatial pattern. Chapter II discusses the cosmic outlook which prompts a writer to aim at presenting simultaneity rather than succession, and examines textual revisions which reveal Lowry's intention to give his theme a cosmic or universal scope. Chapter III examines how Lowry has expanded moments in the narrative through the use of leitmotif. In tracing these flexible motifs, we see that Lowry has used variation to make one symbol or image embrace both positive and negative poles and thus render his central theme, the dichotomy of human experience. Chapter IV traces how Lowry has used another musical device, counterpoint, to expand moments or scenes in the narrative and thus suggest simultaneity. The final chapter discusses the prevailing atmosphere of poised tension and the wave pattern which emerge from the novel's structure and how this pattern not only gives the expanded structure a unity, but also renders theme. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis is an investigation of a group of central themes which run through Lowry”s work; it centres on such key-words as 'isolation', 'alienation', and 'self-absorption'. Lowry's protagonists are seen as men trapped in "a Liverpool of self"; they are characteristically torn between a desire to escape from their prison and a desire to remain in it. Although Lowry invests his self-absorbed heroes with a certain splendour, fulfilment only comes to them when they become capable of reaching beyond themselves and entering into community with another. In the Introduction, I have briefly reviewed Lowry's early life and works. We can find, in his insecure childhood and in his obsessive identification with Conrad Aiken and Nordahl Grieg, evidence of his own alienation; the search for a stable human relationship is central to even his earliest work. Chapter I is a discussion of Lunar Caustic; I distinguish between the two major versions of this book, finding in each a distinct aspect of the search for relationship. The chapter concludes with some observations on the probably structure of The Voyage That Never Ends as Lowry first conceived it. After his second marriage in 1940, the relationship between man and wife became, for Lowry, the prototype of the community which his protagonists seek. In Chapter 2 I discuss Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid and La Mordida, in which the marriage relationship is central. Chapter 2 concludes with an analysis of Sigbjørn Wilderness' 'metaphysical alienation'; Chapter 3 traces the cyclical pattern of Hear Us 0 Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place in terms of the constant struggle to break down the distinction between the inner world of the mind and the outer 'real' world. In "The Element Follows You Around, Sir!" and "Ghostkeeper" we see this 'real' world itself in the throes of a kind of nervous breakdown; in Chapter 4 I attempt to find the meaning of these puzzling stories, and conclude that, like the rest of Lowry's work, they affirm the necessity of the individual to find himself in relation to others. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Although Malcolm Lowry is recognized as a major writer largely for the novel Under the Volcano, his lesser known works, Lunar Caustic, "Through the Panama" and "The Forest Path to the Spring", in Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, are as clearly representative of his place as a twentieth century writer as Under the Volcano, These three novellas were intended by Lowry to be a part of his proposed cycle, The Voyage That Never Ends, and their relationship to the rest of his work can be clearly seen. This thesis examines Lunar Caustic, "Through the Panama", and "The Forest Path to the Spring", in terms of the clear relationship to the proposed cycle. They are analysed primarily in thematic terms, through an analysis of each novella as a separate entity. At the same time, the integral relationship between them will be shown. All Malcolm Lowry’s work is an attempt to defeat chaos and alienation by establishing identity through the exploration of the various masks of self. This process of exploration can be called the quest for self. Accepting this as a basis, the thesis attempts to define and clearly evidence the aspects of the quest in the three novellas. The process is one of discovering the separate masks of self in each novella, and then establishing the links between each mask and their progressive nature. This should clearly delineate the interconnective nature of the three novellas and their link to the remainder of Lowry’s work. This thesis hopes to prove that the design and pattern of Lowry’s operation of the quest, while beginning in despair and chaos, eventually moves to a point of order and redemption, while at the same time showing that in personal and creative terms, the quest and its literary reconstruction are primarily destructive. In the novella Lunar Caustic, despair and chaos prevail and the protagonist fails in his quest for self, although the terms of that quest have been established. Sigbjorn Wilderness, the protagonist of "Through the Panama", moves further towards an acceptance of himself in terms of his past and the disordered world around him. It remains, however, for the nameless protagonist of "The Forest Path to the Spring", to finally reach a point of self acceptance and of salvation. He does this as a composite figure, made up from his predecessors in Lunar Caustic and "Through the Panama", and from Malcolm Lowry himself. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate