Far from the Centre: Robertson Davies and a Provincial Encounter with James Joyce

Robertson Davies’ significant role in promoting and disseminating the work of James Joyce in the pages of the Peterborough Examiner is exemplified in his claim to have introduced Joyce’s work to the emerging literary critic Hugh Kenner. An advocate of Joyce and of modernist literature more broadly, Davies sought, against the backdrop of a provincial setting that both frustrated and motivated him, to soften some of modernism’s difficult edges for his readers and to dispel charges of inaccessibility. In both the Examiner and Saturday Night he argued for Joyce’s universality – of relevance to readers everywhere. Such claims follow from Davies’ larger belief in the importance of fostering literary culture in Canada, the ultimate success of which could be seen in the work of figures such as Kenner. The view of Joyce and of literary modernism that Davies framed for his readers has considerable implications not only for our understanding of Davies, but also for Joyce studies. The assumptions and imperatives that motivated Davies’ promotion of modernism meant that the Joyce that Kenner first encountered was a complex figure, at once provincial and cosmopolitan.