This dissertation is a scholarly edition of the
correspondence between the Canadian poet Irving Layton and
the critic and historian of Canadian literature, Desmond
Pacey; on November 3, 1954, Desmond Pacey wrote to Contact
Press, inviting the poets Irving Layton, Louis Dudek and
Raymond Souster to submit their recent work for discussion
in an article on Canadian literature for The International
Year Book. Pacey and Layton met in Montreal a few months
later, and so began a long friendship and a lengthy
correspondence which continued until Pacey’s death on July
4, 1975. The correspondence is an extremely important
document in the history of Canadian poetry and criticism in
the decisive decades following World War II because it so
directly and extensively explores the crucial issues of the
times: the function of the poet and the critic in
contemporary society; the debate over a “cosmopolitan”
versus a “native” aesthetic; the debate over a “mythopoeic”
versus a “realist” approach to the creation of, and
criticism of, poetry; and the attempt to define a position
for the Jewish writer in a gentile society. But aside from
this prolonged and invaluable theoretical discourse, and
aside from the countless useful insights into the life and
work of practically every writer active in Canada between
1954-1975, the letters between the two men are important because the two men were so vitally important to the
development of a viable Canadian literature.
The basic principle of this project’s editorial
philosophy is the decision to abjure the “editorial
pedantries” of the diplomatic text which tend to exclude
the non—specialist educated public, and to assume greater
flexibility in the standardization and regularization of
spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation and
matters of format——placement of addresses, closings,
postscripts and marginalia. Headnotes contain all textual
information about the letter; transcriptions are in the main
literal, but in the interest of consistency some
standardization has been imposed. Footnotes follow each
letter; cross—references are by letter and, where
applicable, note number; when the reference is to a letter
with a single footnote, no number is cited. These almost
three thousand annotations are employed to identify
individuals referred to in the text, to provide publication
information on the works of Layton, Pacey, and numerous
other individuals referred to in the text, to document and
frequently quote from the reviews, articles, radio and
television programs they discuss, to elucidate references to
current events, and to provide miscellaneous but necessary
background information on matters ranging from the private
lives of the two correspondents to majcir vnts and isuë
in the history of Canadian li’áttñ.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6971 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Pacey, John David Michael |
| 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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