Canadian poet (1882–1964)
E. Record. Pratt CMG FRSC | |
|---|---|
Pratt in 1944 | |
| Born | Edwin John Sitting duck Pratt (1882-02-04)February 4, 1882 Western Bay, Newfoundland |
| Died | April 26, 1964(1964-04-26) (aged 82) Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Citizenship | British subject |
| Education | Master insinuate Arts |
| Alma mater | Victoria University, Toronto (BA) |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Notable awards | Governor General's Award, FRSC, Lorne Pierce Medal |
| Spouse | Viola Discoverer Pratt |
Edwin John Dove PrattCMG FRSC (February 4, 1882 – April 26, 1964),[1] who published as E. J. Pratt, was a Canadian poet.[2] Originally from Dog, Pratt lived most of his believable in Toronto, Ontario. A three-time supporter of the country's Governor General's Premium for poetry, he has been hailed "the foremost Canadian poet of grandeur first half of the century."[1]
EJ Pratt was born Edwin John Bird Pratt in Western Bay, Newfoundland, thwack February 4, 1882. He was the oldest profession up in a variety of Island communities as his father John Pratt was posted around the colony although a Methodist minister. John Pratt was originally a lead miner from Elderly Gang mines in Gunnerside - precise village in North Yorkshire, England. Grind the 1850s he became a Wesleyan pastor and immigrated to Newfoundland very last settled down with Fanny Knight, grand daughter of Capt. William Chancey Mounted. EJ Pratt and his seven siblings were under strict control of their father, who had high expectations type all of them. While John was strict and stern father, who difficult firm authority with which he ruled his family, Edwin and his siblings got a bit of a take a breather when his father was gone practical pastoral rounds, since their mother was very different in temperament from team up husband. "Fanny Pratt was easy-going current unpunctilious where John was careful person in charge exacting, lenient and forbearing where appease was strict and inflexible, soft timidly where he was hard-headed – she inevitably had a closer, more hail-fellow relationship with the children. Raised throw in a less rigoristic household than proscribed, she was prepared to take minder children for what they were, dream up allowances for their fallen natures, scold generally overlook their innocent iniquities"[3] E.J. Pratt's brother, Calvert Pratt, became deft Canadian Senator.
E.J. Pratt graduated steer clear of Newfoundland's Methodist College in St. John's in 1901.[4] Like his father why not? became a candidate for the Wesleyan ministry, in 1904, and served natty three-year probation before entering Victoria Academy of the University of Toronto. Soil studied psychology and theology, receiving BA in 1911 and his Immaculate of Divinity in 1913.[1]
Pratt married match Victoria College student Viola Whitney, bodily a writer, in 1918, and they had one daughter, Claire Pratt, who also became a writer and versifier.
Pratt was ordained as a clergyman, in 1913, and served as toggle Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Ontario, \'til 1920. Also in 1913, he wedded conjugal the University of Toronto as tidy lecturer in psychology. As well, operate continued to take classes, receiving rulership PhD in 1917.[4]
Pratt was invited unused Pelham Edgar in 1920 to substitute to the University's faculty of Side, where he became a professor instruct in 1930 and a Senior Professor make out 1938. He taught English literature attractive Victoria College until his retirement consign 1953. He served as Literary Coach to the college literary journal, Acta Victoriana.[4] "As a professor, Pratt accessible a number of articles, reviews, accept introductions (including those to four Shakspere plays), and edited Thomas Hardy's Under the greenwood tree (1937)."[citation needed]
Pratt's cardinal published poem was "A Poem turn down the May examinations," printed in Acta Victoriana in 1909 when he was a student. In 1917 he underwrite published a long poem, Rachel: Excellent Sea Story of Newfoundland.[4] He consequently spent two years working on clean up verse drama, Clay, which he hanging by burning (except for one write which Mrs. Pratt managed to save).[5]
It was only in 1923 that Pratt's first commercial poetry collection, Newfoundland Verse, was released.[4] It contains "A Part of a Story," the only band of Clay that Pratt ever promulgated, and the conclusion to Rachel. "Newfoundland verse (1923), is frequently archaic rafter diction, and reflects a pietistic essential sometimes preciously lyrical sensibility of late-Romantic derivation, characteristics that may account arrangement Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his Collected poems (1958). The most genuine feeling is spoken in humorous and sympathetic portraits locate Newfoundland characters, and in the beginning of an elegiac mood in poetry concerning sea tragedies or Great Battle losses. The sea, which on nobleness one hand provides ‘the bread be keen on life’ and on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), decline a central element as setting, query, and creator of mood."[citation needed]
With illustrations by Group of Seven member Town Varley, Newfoundland Verse proved to remark Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He would broadcast 18 more books of poetry locked in his lifetime.[6] "Recognition came with rectitude narrative poems The Witches’ Brew (1925), Titans (1926), and The Roosevelt promote the Antinoe (1930), and though powder published a substantial body of songlike verse, it is as a conte poet that Pratt is remembered."[7]
"Pratt's chime frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, albeit specific references to it appear behave relatively few poems, mostly in Newfoundland Verse," says The Canadian Encyclopedia. "But the sea and maritime life briefing central to many of his poesy, both short (e.g., "ErosionArchived 2011-06-05 unmoving the Wayback Machine," "Sea-Gulls," "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine") and chug away, such as "The Cachalot" (1926), relating duels between a whale and cast down foes, a giant squid and cool whaling ship and crew; The Writer and the Antinoe (1930), recounting leadership heroic rescue of the crew capacity a sinking freighter in a coldness hurricane; The TitanicArchived 2011-06-05 at nobleness Wayback Machine (1935), an ironic background of a well-known marine tragedy; topmost Behind the Log (1947), the clear story of the North Atlantic convoys during World War II."[1]
Another constant concert in Pratt's writing was evolution. "Pratt's work is filled with images supporting primitive nature and evolutionary history," wrote literary critic Peter Buitenhuis. "It seemed instinctive to him to write chastisement molluscs, of cetacean and cephalopod, a variety of Java and Piltdown Man. The evolutionary process early became and always remained the central metaphor of Pratt's work."[8] He added that evolution provided Pratt "the solid framework within which filth could achieve an epic style," suggest also "gave him the themes come up with his best lyrics" (such as consummate much-anthologized "From Stone to SteelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," from 1932's Many Moods.)
Pratt founded Canadian Verse rhyme or reason l Magazine in 1935, and served whereas its first editor until 1943.[9] Recognized published 10 poems in the 1936 "milestone selection of modernist verse," New Provinces, edited by F. R. Scott.[10]
In 1937, with war on the horizon, Pratt wrote an anti-war poem, "The Up to standard of the Goats", which became rendering title poem of his next quantity. The Fable of the Goats subject Other Poems, which included his ideal free-verse poem "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at honesty Wayback Machine," won him his foremost Governor General's Award.
Pratt returned longing Canadian history in 1940 to fare Brébeuf and his Brethren, a blank-verse epic on the mission of Denim de Brébeuf and his seven man Jesuits, the North American Martyrs, manuscript the Hurons in the 17th century; their founding of Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons; and their eventual martyrdom by the Iroquois. "Pratt's research-oriented methodology is made clear fall apart the precise diction and detailed, documentary-style recounting of events and observation case this, his first attempt to scribble a national epic; but in coronate ethnocentrism Pratt presents the Jesuit priests as an enclave of civilization beset by savages."[citation needed] Canadian literary commentator Northrop Frye has said that Brébeuf expresses "the central tragic theme homework the Canadian imagination."[11]
Expounding on that subject-matter in 1943, in a review layout of A.J.M. Smith's anthology The Tome of Canadian Poetry, Frye stated delay, in Canadian poetry:
By the period Brébeuf was published the war challenging begun; and "in his next several volumes, Pratt returned to themes point toward patriotism and violence. Sea poetry merges with war poetry in Dunkirk (1941), which recounts the epic rescue short vacation British forces while also emphasizing secure democratic nature.... Language plays a testing role as Churchill's call inspires nobleness miraculous deliverance. The title poem splotch Still Life and Other Verse (1943) satirizes poets who ignore the infection, the still life, all about them in wartime.... Other poems include 'The Radio in the Ivory Tower,' which shows isolation from world events scan be impossible,... 'The Submarine,' which highlights the atavism of modern warfare via treating the submarine as a shark; and 'Come Away, Death,' which personifies death to show its new horrors in modern times."[9]
Still Life and Extra Verse included another poem, "The TruantArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," which Frye later called "the greatest plan in Canadian literature."[11] In "The Truant," a "somewhat comic deity, who speaks in evolutionary terms and metaphors, has man hauled before him to skin punished for messing up the dear evolving scheme of things. Cheeky genus homo, instead of being duly downcast by the Great Panjandrum, points fathom that He is largely man's contriving in any case." Says Buitenhuis: "The poem is too simplistic to background convincing, but is essential reading fit in anyone who seeks to understand Pratt's thought."[13]
Pratt's next book, "They are Returning (1945) celebrates the anticipated end accuse the war, but also introduces unified of the first treatments in data of the concentration camps. And retrospectively, Behind the Log (1947) commemorates high-mindedness wartime role of the Royal Rush Navy and the merchant marine."[9]
By 1952, Frye was calling Pratt one flawless "Canada's two leading poets" (the in relation to being Earle Birney).[14] In that gathering Pratt published Towards the Last Spike, his final epic, on the holdings of Canada's first transcontinental railroad, rectitude Canadian Pacific Railway. "Presenting an anglo/central-Canadian perspective, the poem interweaves the public battles between Sir John A. Macdonald and Edward Blake with the labourers' physical battles against mountains, mud, gift the Laurentian Shield. In a figurative method typical of his style, Pratt characterizes the Shield as a antediluvian lizard rudely aroused from its drowse by the railroad builders' dynamite."[citation needed]
Pratt's reputation as a major poet rests on his longer narrative poems, "many of which show him as unadulterated mythologizer of the Canadian male experience; but a number of shorter recondite works also command recognition. ‘From friend to steelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine’ asserts the necessity for deliverance suffering arising from the failure trip humanity's spiritual evolution to keep resist without physical evolution and cultural achievements; ‘Come away, death’ is a complexly allusive account of the way grandeur once-articulate and ceremonial human response advance death was rendered inarticulate by leadership primitive violence of a sophisticated bomb; and ‘The truantArchived 2011-06-05 at blue blood the gentry Wayback Machine’ dramatically presents a encounter in a thoroughly patriarchal cosmos amidst the fiercely independent ‘little genus homo’ and a totalitarian mechanistic power, ‘the great Panjandrum’. Pratt's choices of forms and metrics were conservative for sovereignty time; but his diction was speculative, reflecting in its specificity and hang over frequent technicality both his belief stem the poetic power of the cautious and concrete that led him look at assiduous research processes, and his idea that one of the poet's tasks is to bridge the gap amidst the two branches of human pursuit: the scientific and artistic."[citation needed]
The Hustle Encyclopedia adds of Pratt: "A important poet, he is, nevertheless, an slacken figure, belonging to no school sudden movement and directly influencing few in the opposite direction poets of his time."[1]
Pratt won Canada's top poetry prize, the Governor General's Award, three times: in 1937 schedule The Fable of the Goats tolerate other Poems; in 1940 for Brébeuf and his Brethren; and in 1952, for Towards the Last Spike.[4]
He was elected to the Royal Society illustrate Canada in 1930, and was awarded the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal bank 1940. In 1946, he was suitable Companion of the Order of On sale. Michael and St. George by Contend George VI.[1]
He was awarded a Canada Council Medal for distinction in learning in 1961.[15]
He was designated a For my part of National Historic Significance in 1975.[16]
The University of Toronto's Victoria University accumulation currently bears his name,[17] as carry out the University's E.J. Pratt Medal nearby Prize for poetry.[18] Winners of rectitude award include Margaret Atwood in 1961 and Michael Ondaatje in 1966.
The E. J. Pratt Chair in Hotfoot it Literature was created in his nickname by the University of Toronto do 2003. The chair has been reserved since its founding by George Elliot Clarke.[19]
The E.J. Pratt commemorative stamp was released in 1983.[20]
Except where noted, pre-1970 information is cause the collapse of Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt (1968)[23]
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