This dissertation argues that, since at least the 1960s, there has been a distinguished tradition of
Canadian poets who have turned to the novel as a result of their dissatisfaction with the
limitations of the lyric and instead have built the lyric into a mode of narrative that contrasts
sharply with the descriptive conventions of plot-driven novels. Citing the affinity between the
lyric sequence and the visual series, the introduction maintains that the treatment of narrative as
a series of frames, as well as the self-conscious dismantling of these framing devices, is a topos
in Canadian literature. The term "(un)framing" expresses this double movement. The thesis
asserts that Michael Ondaatje, George Bowering, Joy Kogawa, Daphne Marlatt, and Anne
Carson (un)frame their novels according to formal precedents established in their long poems.
Chapter 2 illustrates the relation of the visual series to the song cycle in Ondaatje's long
poems the man with seven toes (1969) and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), as well
as his first novel Coming Through Slaughter (1976). Chapter 3 traces the development of the
"serial novel" from Bowering's early serial poems to his trilogy, Autobiology (1972), Curious
(1973) , and A Short Sad Book (1977). Chapter 4 argues that Joy Kogawa structures her novel
Ohasan (1981) on the concentric narrative model established in her long poem "Dear Euclid"
(1974) . Chapter 5 shows how Daphne Marlatt performs a series of variations on the quest
narrative that she finds in Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen (1844), and thereby
develops a lesbian quest narrative in her long poem Frames of a Story (1968), her novella Zocalo
(1977), and her novel Ana Historic (1988). Chapter 6 explores the combination of lyric, essay,
and interview in Carson's long poem "Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings" (1995) and argues
that the long poem forms the basis of her novel in verse, Autobiography of Red (1998).
The final chapter assesses some of the strengths and limitations of lyrical fiction and
concludes that a thorough grasp of the contemporary long poem is essential to an understanding
of the development of the novel in Canada.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/13505 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Rae, Ian |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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