E.J. Pratt : : The Truant Years 1882–1927 / / David G. Pitt.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Archive 1933-1999
• VerfasserIn: Pitt, David G.,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2019]; ©1984
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Series: Heritage
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (448 p.)

E.J. Pratt (1882-1964) is generally recognized as the leading Canadian poet of his generation. Moreover, as Marshall McLuhan observed in 1958, Pratt was, in his personal and social life, 'a one-man creator of a climate for the arts and letters in Canada.'The Truant Years covers the first forty-five years of a full and eventful life. It provides an intimate account of life in the Newfoundland outports where Pratt grew up a sensitive boy in the family of a nomadic Methodist preacher. It describes his leaving school and home at age fifteen to spend three fruitless years working in St. John's; his return to school and reluctant enlistment in the Methodist ministry; and, after many adventures and misadventures, his arrival in Toronto to attend university and eventually to make a permanent home there. 'Ned' Pratt found his place at last in the practice of poetry and in the teaching of literature at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. With the publication of The Witches' Brew and Titans in 1926, he achieved both national acclaim as the premier new poet of Canada and international recognition as one of the best narrative poets of his time.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- BOOK I: THE NEWFOUNDLAND PARSON' S SON 1882-1907 -- 1. Ancestral Roots -- 2. The Outport World -- 3. Childhood in an Outport Manse -- 4. To the City and Back -- 5. Commerce and College -- 6. Teaching, Preaching, and Peddling -- BOOK II: THE WANDERING SCHOLAR 1907-16 -- 7. Undergraduate of Victoria College -- 8. Westward Ho! -- 9. In Search of an Anchorage -- 10. Oasis in the Sahara -- 11. Tangential Steps -- BOOK III: THE YOUNG POET 1916-23 -- 12. Stirrings of New Notes -- 13. Matrimony and Other Diversions -- 14. Storming Parnassus -- 15. A Port at Last -- 16. Arcadian Adventures -- 17. Preparations for Launching - on Troubled Seas -- 18. A Viking Raid -- BOOK IV: THE NEW VOICE 1923-7 -- 19. Saturnalia Observed -- 20. Of Publishers and Poets -- 21. Shades of Egdon -- 22. An Unsentimental Journey -- 23. Of Whales and Other Leviathans -- 24. Sunlight and Shadows -- 25. A National Event and Heady Wine -- 26. Pleiocene Armageddon and Other Dreams -- 27. Public and Private -- 28. Hymns Devout, Brickbats, and Roses -- Notes and References -- Bibliography -- Index