This thesis shows how literary primitivism is the pivot around which Davenport's literary designs spin. Thematically as well as technically the material in his first four collections of short stories is all derived from a desire to explore the beginnings, or the primitive wellsprings, of writing and art. The collage-like construction of picture and sentence will be shown to evolve from a knowledge of palaeolithic cave painting, humanity's first writing system, while Davenport's use of cataloguing and paratactic systems will be shown to evolve from ancient Greek. His primitivism also reveals itself in a Rousseau-like concern to highlight the advantages of primitive civilization on a modern industrial one and how the lessons learned from that are invaluable for present-day society.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.23347 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | O'Reilly, Séan A. (Séan Anthony) |
| Contributors | Wees, William (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| 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 |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001484914, proquestno: MM12066, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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