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Robertson Davies: The tory mode

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Notes

  1. Tom Wolfe,Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1970).

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  2. December (1974). Canadian Broadcasting Company.

  3. Robertson Davies,A Voice from the Attic, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart (New Canadian Library, 83 (1972). Reissue of 1960 hardcover. All page citations in this article are to the NCL 1972 edition.

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  4. Robert Cluett, “Arcadia Wired,”Language and Style 8, 2 (Summer, 1974), 119–138;Prose Style and Critical Reading, New York: Teachers College Press (1976).

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  5. The historical trends discussed here are elaborated in detail, with graphic, tabular, and textual illustration, in Chapter 9,Prose Style and Critical Reading, pp. 216–65.

  6. We have run a Pearson’sr on three groups of samples to ascertain the correlation between prepositions and nouns. In a sample group of 29, all before 1800, the correlation coefficient was 0.44; in a sample group of 50, evenly distributed between 1580 and 1970, the coefficient was 0.36; in a group of 15 twentieth-century samples, the coefficient was 0.29.

  7. Francis Bacon’s contemptuous characterization of the main fault of the (humanist-dominated) education of his time. SeeAdvancement of Learning, “Distempers of Learning: Delicate Learning — Vain Words.”

  8. A full comparison of Davies’s style in fiction with that ofVoice would require another article. There issome effect of genre: in the fiction there are more pronouns, more participles, and more predicating verbs; there are fewercopulae and fewer passives. Nevertheless, in comparison with fiction by Leacock, Callaghan, Nabokov, Richler, Huxley, Waugh, and Fitzgerald, he deviates in the same categories and directions that have been denominated here forVoice.

  9. For particular observations, seeProse Style and Critical Reading: 53–55 (Reich), 178–215 (Carlyle), 85 (Parsons) and 63–74 (sociological styles in general). For observations on Macaulay, see Walter Bagehot’s classic essay, “Mr. Macaulay.”

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  1. York University, Downsview, Ontario, Canada

    Robert Cluett (associate professor of English)

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  1. Robert Cluett
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Cluett, R. Robertson Davies: The tory mode. Comput Hum 11, 13–23 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02401449

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