The relevance of Robertson Davies

The relevance of Robertson Davies RONALD SUTHERLAND I must confess that I always found novelist , dramatist and essayist Robertson Davies something of an enigma. Having once heard him address, purportedly in the interests of national bilingualism, a convocation at Bishop's University entirely in Latin, I was never certain when to take Davies seriously. He did not fit into any of the general thematic patterns of Canadian writing as I saw them, which, of course, was perfectly all right. His works are of high literary merit, glitteringly clever, witty and entertaining that they have been somewhat distinctive in the body of Canadian literature only adds to their merit perhaps. As a humorist, Robertson Davies seems to me to be very British. The North American tradition of literary humour - I am not sure if there is a peculiarly Canadian variety can be traced back through the comedy writers of American newspapers of the early 1800's and Mark Twain to Thomas Chandler Haliburton. This tradition leans heavily on dialect or accent, incongruity, exaggeration and the naive or "queer" character to achieve humorous effect. Almost any of Mark Twain's best known works would serve to illustrate - the use of several dialects in Huckleberry Finn, the naiveness of Jim, the exaggeration of Romanticism in the Shepherdson-Grangerford episode, the incongruity of the "Duke" and the "King" and so on. The same devices also characterize the humour of Canadian specialists such as Stephen Leacock, Henry Drummond, Paul Hiebert, W. 0. Mitchell or Quebec monologuist Yvon Deschamps. Leacock's sketches sparkle with the comedy of slight exaggeration and incongruity, and Drummond's verse depends entirely on the fractured English of the French-Canadian habitant. Hiebert, Mitchell and Deschamps all three exploit dialect (Mitchell's Saint Sammy and Jake are prime examples) and Journal of Canadian Studies the naiveness or oddness of characters. Paul Hiebert's delightful Sarah Binks might well have been inspired by Mark Twain's storied spoof review of the "Sweet Singer of Michigan" (who, incidentally, took the review seriously and wrote another book), and certainly Hiebert uses the device of exaggeration with brilliant results. Yvon Deschamps' monologues often build upon the incongruous , such as in the retelling of the story of "le p'tit Jesus," with his "grosse gang," hippie beard and annoying habit of demonstrating in the streets against one thing or another. Now I realize that it is unsafe to make such generalizations, and surely there will be many exceptions, but I see the devices of British humour to be for the most part quite different from those of the North American tradition. In Britain, for instance, dialects are used to identify, but apparently they have been around too long to be funny in themselves . Even in something like George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, dialect, I suspect, adds colour rather than comedy for the Britisher. tt was in the United States that the play was made into such an immensely popular musical. Difficult it is to imagine Scottish, Irish, Welsh or English diction being used in the same way as W. 0. Mitchell uses Saint Sammy's speech in the following, where Sammy is telling about God warning him of a storm: Sammy, Sammy, this is her, and I say untuh you she is a dandy! Moreover I have tried her out! I have blew over Tourigny's henhouse; I have uprooted Dan Tate's windbreak, tooken the back door off of the schoolhouse , turned over the girls' toilet, three racks, six grain wagons.... In two hours did I cook her up; in two hours will I cook her down! (pp. 308309 ) British humour, in my experience, seems largely to depend on urbanity, irony, and especially on straight-faced, often elaborate presentation of the absurd as commonplace. 75 I recall a weather report on the B.B.C. one Wednesday night when the announcer, without the slightest change in tone, concluded his remarks by saying: "And toward midn ·ight we shall be expecting scattered outbreaks of Thursday." The detailed film documentary on "spaghetti harvesting" in Italy is an example of the lengths to which the British will go, of a piece with Robertson Davies' Latin convocation address on behalf...