"A lyrical, monumental work of fact and imagination." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Arrogance and innocence, hubris and hope — twenty-four haunting voices of the Titanic tragedy, as well as the iceberg itself, are evoked in a stunning tour de force. Slipping in telegraphs, undertaker’s reports, and other records, poet Allan Wolf offers a breathtaking, intimate glimpse at the lives behind the tragedy, told with clear-eyed compassion and astounding emotional power.
George and Catherine Stewart share not only the burden of Catherine's heart disease, which could cause her death at any time, but the memory of Jerome Martell, her first husband and George's closest friend. Martel, a brilliant doctor passionately concerned with social justice, is presumed to have died in a Nazi prison camp. His sudden return to Montreal precipitates the central crisis of the novel. Hugh MacLennan takes the reader into the lives of his three characters and back into the world of Montreal in the thirties, when politics could send an idealist across the world to Spain, France, Auschwitz, Russia, and China before his return home.
Is it possible to write an artistically respectable and theoretically convincing religious novel in a non-religious age? Up to now, there has been no substantial application of theological criticism to the works of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan, the two most important Canadian novelists before 1960. Yet both were religious writers during the period when Canada entered the modern, non-religious era, and both greatly influenced the development of our literature. Faith and Fiction: A Theological Critique of the Narrative Strategies of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan is a significant contribution to the relatively new field studying the relation between religion and literature in Canada.
Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Cologne (Englisches Seminar 1), language: English, abstract: This paper examines the way in which Hugh MacLennan incorporates elements of Canadian identity into his renowned novel The Watch That Ends The Night. Firstly, an attempt to define the terminology that is essential for the understanding of this paper will be made. Moreover, rather complex phenomena such as ‘identity’ or ‘nation’ will be briefly discussed whilst taking into account influential works such as Anderson’s Imagined Communities. Having introduced the terminology, this paper will be concerned with the question of how these concepts can be applied to the situation in Canada. On that point, the relevance of national identity for Canada will be debated. In order to do so, Canadian nationalism will be taken into consideration. Then, MacLennan’s The Watch That Ends The Night will be examined, taking into account the different elements of identity constitution to be found in the novel. Thereby, the aspects of Canadian identity will revolve around the main themes of history, politics and religion. The significance of the thematization of national identity in MacLennan's novel shall be discussed as well as the novel’s impact. The central thesis of this paper is that in his The Watch That Ends The Night, Hugh MacLennan utilizes Canada’s involvement in an international conflict as well as the nation’s history during the early twentieth century in order to establish a sense of national identity among the readers.
Since the publication of Two Solitudes in 1945, Hugh MacLennan has been generally accepted as one of Canada's premier novelists. However, recent studies suggest the need for a reappraisal of MacLennan's status. This need is confirmed by a close examination of his writing in recent years, which has raised questions about the depth of the quality of his works, his scope and inclusiveness, his modernism, as well as other issues. In this volume, leading scholars offer fresh perceptions of MacLennan's personality, character, and artistry. Among other issues, they examine the quality of his writing, the influences on his work, and its importance for Canadian literature. Moreover, conclusions are offered about his international, national, regional, and civic intent; his love-hate relationship with the nationalist literary agenda; his attitude toward women; his own "feminine side"; the authenticity of the father-son conflict central to his fiction; his attitude toward his own and other writers' works, the role of critics, the future of literature. An annotated bibliographic update is also included.
