Between 1936 and 1946 Malcolm Lowry produced a succession of versions or revisions of Under the Volcano. He began this lengthy undertaking in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and continued it in Los Angeles—where he moved in 1938—and Vancouver, British Columbia to which he moved just prior to the outbreak of war in 1939. In 1940 he submitted what he considered at the time to be the final version to a number of major and minor publishers, all of whom had rejected it by 1941. During the same year, having moved out of the city of Vancouver to the nearby squatter's settlement at Dollarton, Lowry re-commenced to revise the novel. By Christmas of 1944, after thousands of pages of revisions, he had more-or-less completed another "final" version, and a retyped copy of this was accepted in 1945 for publication early in 1947. In general, the many successive post-1940 versions of the novel show only minor alterations to the basic story or plot of the rejected version. But Lowry re-presented this fundamental story in such a way that the overall effect of the novel published in 1947 was extremely different from that of the rejected 1940 version. In the course of this post-1941 revising of the novel, Lowry made a great many marginal annotations. As a rule they recorded his immediate feelings or thoughts about some aspect of the draft version he was considering at the time. Examination of these notes reveals a pattern of motivation lying behind Lowry's gradual representation of the novel's basic story. On the one hand, his critical notes ultimately expressed dissatisfaction with a melodramatic and allegorical view of the world implicitly held by the narrator of the pre-1941 versions of the novel; on the other, his strategic notes complemented this criticism by recording his local attempts to represent the novel's basic story from a philosophically and psychologically more complex point-of-view. It also becomes clear during examination of Lowry's marginalia that the earlier narrator's implied view of the world was profoundly neurotic. And the structure of this neurosis precisely paralleled a neurosis evident in Lowry's own view of the people around him prior to 1941 and his move to Dollarton. Regarded in this light, Lowry's marginal notes appear to record not only a creative aesthetic development but also a creative re-vision of his own personality—a movement away from his own neurosis that he achieved by means of his literary engagement. In the final analysis the personal and literary undertakings must be understood as a single integrated process; the record of Lowry's revision of Under the Volcano is thus an extremely detailed example of precisely how literary creativity can be understood as therapy. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Lowry's controversial and enigmatic book has spawned diverse critical analyses geared toward arriving at a single understanding of the novel; however, what too many of these works fail to take into account is the eclectic nature of Lowry's techniques as well as his themes. Hence, though we usually get a very clear picture of one approach to the book in these individual exercises in explication, when we turn once again to the story itself, we are apt to be a bit confused as to exactly how the design that they offer governs the unity of the book. Therefore, in order to glean the author's intent, one must take a more comprehensive, a rhetorical, view of the piece.For future reference, chapter one -- "A Review of Criticism" -summarizes and evaluates book reviews and critical studies done on Under the Volcano, the critical studies being organized into source, theme and technique analyses, respectively,Chapter two, "Rhetorical Analysis Defined," considers the critical theories of Edward Corbett, Mark Schorer and Wayne Booth to adumbrate the notion that a rhetorical analysis addresses the writer's intent, his work and thee work's impact upon its aud4ence to evaluate the effectiveness of a piece of literature. As an illustration, Lowry's essay "Garden of Etla" is explicated rhetorically here.In chapter three, "A Rhetorical Analysis of Under the Volcano," a chapter-by-chapter, detailed approach to the novel is used in order to illuminate the techniques which promote and define Lowry's themes. The techniques include those that establish stream of consciousness (interior monologues and dialogues), those that determine its direction (syntax, time and space montage, and mechanical devices) and those that add depth and dimension (figures of speech, puns and distorted English).The last chapter, "Malcolm Lowry's 'Design-Governing Postures, ," examines unifying structures which range the entire book and which thereby impose order on it. These designs include Lowry's use of the traditional unities, leitmotifs, parodies, symbolic structures, formal arrangements and "cyclic" themes.Critics of the novel contend that though enjoying isolated moments of direction and lucidness, Under the Volcano fails to convey it purpose effectively because the themes are nebulous and because the techniques segment rather than solidify the story. By explicating the book rhetorically, however, one learns to understand and appreciate the techniques that Lowry employs to amplify the fragmentation endured by the Consul, the people closest to him and, in fact, the entire world around him. Indeed, Lowry offers up a cogent cautionary vision of a twentieth-century world disintegrating because it lacks that force singularly capable of unifying it -- love.

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Zugl.: Freiburg (Breisgau), Univ., Diss., 2007

Zugleich: Diss. Freiburg (Breisgau), 2007. / Literaturverz.

Zugleich: Diss. Freiburg (Breisgau), 2007. / Literaturverz.

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