E. J. Pratt: Difference between revisions

| caption = E.Pratt J. Pratt,in 1944

| birth_place = [[Western Bay]], [[Newfoundland Colony|Newfoundland]]

| death_place = [[Toronto]], [[Ontario]], [[Canada]]

| alma_mater = [[Victoria University, Toronto]] ([[Bachelor of TorontoArts|BA]])

'''Edwin John Dove Pratt''', {{post-nominals|country=CAN|CMG|FRSC}} {{post-nominals|country=UK|CMG}} (February 4, 1882 &ndash; April 26, 1964),<ref name="pitt"/> who published as '''E. J. Pratt''', was "the leadinga [[Canadians|Canadian]] poet of his time."<ref name=britannica>"[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/474052/EJ-Pratt E.J. Pratt]," ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', Britannica.com, Web, May 3, 2011.</ref> He was a [[Canadians|Canadian]] poetOriginally from [[Newfoundland Colony|Newfoundland]], whoPratt lived most of his life in [[Toronto]], [[Ontario]]. A three-time winner of the country's [[Governor General's Awards|Governor General's Award]] for poetry, he has been called "the foremost [[Canadian poetry|Canadian poet]] of the first half of the century." <ref name="pitt">David G. Pitt, "[http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006453 Pratt, Edwin John] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110215082539/http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0006453 |date=2011-02-15 }}," ''Canadian Encyclopedia'' (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988), 1736.</ref>

EJ Pratt was born Edwin John Dove Pratt in [[Western Bay]], [[Newfoundland Colony|Newfoundland]], on February 4, 1882. He was brought up in a variety of Newfoundland communities as his father John Pratt was posted around the colony as a Methodist minister. John Pratt was originally a lead miner from Old Gang mines in Gunnerside - a village in North Yorkshire, England. In 1850’sthe 1850s he became a Methodist pastor and immigrated to Newfoundland and settled down with Fanny Knight, a daughter of Capt. [[William Chancey Knight]]. EJ Pratt and his seven siblings were under strict control of their father, who had high expectations of all of them. While John was strict and stern father, who had firm authority with which he ruled his family, Edwin and his siblings got a bit of a break when his father was gone on pastoral rounds, since their mother was very different in temperament from her husband. “Fanny"Fanny Pratt was easy-going and unpunctilious where John was careful and exacting, lenient and forbearing where he was strict and inflexible, soft hearted where he was hard-headed – she inevitably had a closer, more comradely relationship with the children. Raised in a less rigoristic household than he, she was prepared to take her children for what they were, make allowances for their fallen natures, and generally overlook their innocent iniquities” iniquities"<ref>David G. Pitt (1984). E.J. Pratt : the Truant Years, 1882-1927. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, pg. 32</ref> E.J. Pratt's brother, [[Calvert Pratt]], became a [[Canadian Senate of Canada|Canadian Senator]].

E.J. Pratt graduated from [[Prince of Wales Collegiate|Newfoundland's Methodist College]] in [[St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador|St. John's]], Newfoundland's Methodist College in 1901.<ref name="online">"[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/ E.J. Pratt:Biography] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150110163840/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/ |date=2015-01-10 }}," Canadian Poetry Online, University of Toronto Libraries. Web, Mar. 17, 2011.</ref> Like his father he became a candidate for the Methodist ministry, in 1904, and served a three-year probation before entering [[Victoria University, Toronto|Victoria College]] of the [[University of Toronto]]. He studied [[psychology]] and [[theology]], receiving his BA in 1911 and his Bachelor of Divinity in 1913.<ref name="pitt"/>

Pratt was ordained as a minister, in 1913, and served as an Assistant Minister in [[Streetsville]], [[Ontario]], until 1920. Also in 1913, he joined the University of Toronto as a Lecturerlecturer in psychology. As well, he continued to take classes, receiving his PhD in 1917.<ref name="online"/>

Pratt was invited by [[Pelham Edgar]] in 1920 to switch to the University's faculty of English, where he became a professor in 1930 and a Senior Professor in 1938. He taught [[English literature]] at Victoria College until his retirement in 1953. He served as Literary Adviser to the college literary journal, ''[[Acta Victoriana]]''.<ref name="online"/> "As a professor, Pratt published a number of articles, reviews, and introductions (including those to four [[Shakespeare]] plays), and edited [[Thomas Hardy]]'s ''[[Under the greenwood tree]]'' (1937)." <ref name{{cn|date="gingell">Susan Gingell, "[http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/8534/E-J-Pratt.html E.J. Pratt Biography - (1882–1964)]", ''Encyclopedia of Literature'', 8534. JRank.org, Web, Mar. 26,August 2011.</ref>2022}}

Pratt's first published poem was "A Poem on the May examinations," printed in ''Acta Victoriana'' in 1909 when he was a student. In 1917 he privately published a long poem, ''Rachel: A Sea Story of Newfoundland''.<ref name="online"/> He then spent two years working on a verse drama, ''Clay'', which he ended by burning (except for one copy which Mrs. Pratt managed to save).<ref>Robert Gibbs, "[http://cinema2.arts.ubc.ca/units/canlit/pdfs/articles/canlit55-Knocking(Gibbs).pdf A Knocking in the Clay] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110727121833/http://cinema2.arts.ubc.ca/units/canlit/pdfs/articles/canlit55-Knocking(Gibbs).pdf |date=2011-07-27 }}," ''Canadian Literature No. 55'', 50. UBC.ca, Web, Mar. 27, 2011.</ref>

It was only in 1923 that Pratt's first commercial poetry collection, '''''Newfoundland Verse''''', was released.<ref name="online"/> It contains "A Fragment of a Story," the only piece of ''Clay'' that Pratt ever published, and the conclusion to ''Rachel.'' "''Newfoundland verse'' (1923), is frequently archaic in diction, and reflects a [[Pietism|pietistic]] and sometimes preciously lyrical sensibility of late-[[Romantic poetry|Romantic]] derivation, characteristics that may account for Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his ''Collected poems'' (1958). The most genuine feeling is expressed in humorous and sympathetic portraits of Newfoundland characters, and in the creation of an elegiac mood in poems concerning sea tragedies or [[World War I|Great War]] losses. The sea, which on the one hand provides ‘the bread of life’ and on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), is a central element as setting, subject, and creator of mood."{{cn|date=August <ref name="gingell"/>2022}}

With illustrations by [[Group of Seven (artists)|Group of Seven]] member [[Frederick Varley]], ''Newfoundland Verse'' proved to be Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He would publish 18 more books of poetry in his lifetime.<ref>Brian Trehearne ed., "[httphttps://books.google.cacom/books?id=BZJGnhAQT6cC&pg=PA21#v=onepage&q&f=false E.J. Pratt 1882-1964]," ''Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960'' (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 2010), 21. Google Books, Web, Mar. 20, 2011.</ref> "Recognition came with the narrative poems '''''The Witches’ Brew''''' (1925), '''''Titans''''' (1926), and ''The Roosevelt and the Antinoe'' (1930), and though he published a substantial body of lyric verse, it is as a narrative poet that Pratt is remembered." <ref name="vulpe">Nicola Vulpe, "[http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/pratt-ej-18821964-tf/ Pratt, E.J. 1882–1964]," ''Reader’s Guide to Literature in English''. BookRags.com, Web, Mar. 26, 2011.</ref>

"Pratt's poetry frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, though specific references to it appear in relatively few poems, mostly in ''Newfoundland Verse''," says ''[[Canadian Encyclopedia|The Canadian Encyclopedia]]''. "But the sea and maritime life are central to many of his poems, both short (e.g., "[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem1.htm Erosion] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164447/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem1.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}," "Sea-Gulls," "[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem4.htm Silences] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164254/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem4.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}") and long, such as "'''The Cachalot'''" (1926), describing duels between a whale and its foes, a giant squid and a whaling ship and crew; '''''The Roosevelt and the Antinoe''''' (1930), recounting the heroic rescue of the crew of a sinking freighter in a winter hurricane; ''[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem6.htm The Titanic] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164259/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem6.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}'' (1935), an ironic retelling of a well-known marine tragedy; and ''Behind the Log'' (1947), the dramatic story of the North Atlantic convoys during [[World War II]]." <ref name="pitt"/>

Another constant [[Motif (narrative)|motif]] in Pratt's writing was [[evolution]]. "Pratt's work is filled with images of primitive nature and evolutionary history," wrote literary critic [http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=370 Peter Buitenhuis]. "It seemed instinctive to him to write of [[mollusca|molluscs]], of [[cetacean]] and [[cephalopod]], of [[Java Man|Java]] and [[Piltdown Man]]. The evolutionary process early became and always remained the central metaphor of Pratt's work." <ref name="buit">Peter Buitenhuis, "Introduction," ''Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt'' (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968), xiii.</ref> He added that evolution provided Pratt "the solid framework within which he could achieve an epic style," and also "gave him the themes for his best lyrics" (such as his much-anthologized "[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem2.htm From Stone to Steel] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164515/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem2.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}," from 1932's ''Many Moods''.)

Pratt founded ''Canadian Poetry Magazine'' in 1935, and served as its first editor until 1943.<ref name="new">William H. New, ''[httphttps://books.google.cacom/books?id=Mkh2vJ_9GpEC&pg=PA901&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=false Encyclopedia of Canadian Literature]'' (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2002), 901. Google Books. Web, Mar. 19, 2011</ref> He published 10 poems in the 1936 "milestone selection of modernist verse," '''''[[New Provinces (poetry anthology)|New Provinces]]''''', edited by [[F. R. Scott|F.&nbsp;R. Scott]].<ref name="encyclopediecanadienne1988"/>

In 1937, with war on the horizon, Pratt wrote an anti-war poem, "The Fable of the Goats,", which became the title poem of his next volume. '''''The Fable of the Goats and Other Poems''''', which included his classic free-verse poem "[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem4.htm Silences] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164254/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem4.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}," won him his first Governor General's Award.

Pratt returned to Canadian history in 1940 to write '''''Brébeuf and his Brethren''''', a blank-verse epic on the mission of [[Jean de Brébeuf]] and his seven fellow [[Society of Jesus|Jesuits]], the [[North American Martyrs]], to the [[Wyandot people|Hurons]] in the 17th century; their founding of [[Sainte-Marie among the Hurons|Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons]]; and their eventual martyrdom by the [[Iroquois]]. "Pratt's research-oriented methodology is made clear in the precise diction and detailed, documentary-style recounting of events and observation in this, his first attempt to write a national epic; but in his ethnocentrism Pratt presents the Jesuit priests as an enclave of civilization beleaguered by savages."{{cn|date=August <ref name="gingell"/>2022}} Canadian literary critic [[Northrop Frye]] has said that ''Brébeuf'' expresses "the central tragic theme of the Canadian imagination." <ref name="Preface to An Uncollected Anthology">Northrop Frye, "[http://northropfrye-thebushgarden.blogspot.com/2009/02/preface-to-uncollected-anthology.html Preface to An Uncollected Anthology]," ''The Bush Garden'' (Toronto:Anansi, 1971), 173.</ref>

:The unconscious horror of nature and the subconscious horrors of the mind thus coincide: this amalgamation is the basis of symbolism on which nearly all Pratt's poetry is founded. The fumbling and clumsy monsters of his "Pliocene Armageddon," who are simply incarnate wills to mutual destruction, are the same monsters that beget [[Nazism]] and inspire The Fable of the Goats; and in the fine "[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem4.htm Silences] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164254/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem4.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}," which Mr. Smith includes, civilized life is seen geologically as merely one clock-tick in eons of ferocity. The waste of life in the death of the Cachalot and the waste of courage and sanctity in the killing of the Jesuit missionaries are tragedies of a unique kind in modern poetry: like the tragedy of [[Job (biblical figure)|Job]], they seem to move upward to a vision of a monstrous [[Leviathan]], a power of chaotic [[nihilism]] which is "king over all the children of pride." <ref>Northrop Frye, "[http://northropfrye-thebushgarden.blogspot.com/2009/02/02/canada-and-its-poetry.html Canada and Its Poetry]{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}," ''The Bush Garden'' (Toronto:Anansi, 1971), 141.</ref>

By the time ''Brébeuf'' was published the war had begun; and "in his next four volumes, Pratt returned to themes of patriotism and violence. Sea poetry merges with war poetry in '''''Dunkirk''''' (1941), which recounts the [[Dunkirk evacuation|epic rescue]] of British forces while also emphasizing its democratic nature.... Language plays a pivotal role as [[Churchill, Winston|Churchill]]'s call inspires the miraculous deliverance. The title poem in '''''Still Life and Other Verse''''' (1943) satirizes poets who ignore the destruction, the still life, all about them in wartime.... Other poems include 'The Radio in the Ivory Tower,' which shows isolation from world events to be impossible,... 'The Submarine,' which highlights the [[atavism]] of modern warfare by treating the submarine as a shark; and '[http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/pratt/poems/texts/161/fr161annotated.html Come Away, Death],' which personifies death to show its new horrors in modern times." <ref name="new"/>

''Still Life and Other Verse'' included another poem, "[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem3.htm The Truant] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164422/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem3.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}," which Frye later called "the greatest poem in Canadian literature." <ref name="Preface to An Uncollected Anthology"/> In "The Truant," a "somewhat comic deity, who speaks in evolutionary terms and metaphors, has man hauled before him to be punished for messing up the grand evolving scheme of things. Cheeky ''genus homo'', instead of being duly cowed by the Great Panjandrum, points out that He is largely man's invention in any case." Says Buitenhuis: "The poem is too simplistic to be convincing, but is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand Pratt's thought." <ref>Peter Buitenhuis, "Introduction," ''Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt'' (Toronto: Macmillan, 1968), xvi.</ref>

Pratt's next book, "'''''They are Returning''''' (1945) celebrates the anticipated end of the war, but also introduces one of the first treatments in literature of the [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camps]]. And retrospectively, '''''Behind the Log''''' (1947) commemorates the wartime role of the [[Royal Canadian Navy]] and the [[Canadian Merchant Navy|merchant marine]]." <ref name="new"/>

By 1952, Frye was calling Pratt one of "Canada's two leading poets" (the other being [[Earle Birney]]).<ref>Northrop Frye, "[http://northropfrye-thebushgarden.blogspot.com/2009/02/from-letters-in-canada-1952.html from 'Letters from Canada' University of Toronto Quarterly - 1952]," ''The Bush Garden'' (Toronto:Anansi, 1971), 10.</ref> In that year Pratt published '''''[[Towards the Last Spike]]''''', his final epic, on the building of Canada's first transcontinental railroad, the [[Canadian Pacific Railway]]. "Presenting an anglo/central-Canadian perspective, the poem interweaves the political battles between Sir [[John A. Macdonald]] and [[Edward Blake]] with the labourers' physical battles against mountains, mud, and the [[Laurentian Shield]]. In a metaphorical method typical of his style, Pratt characterizes the Shield as a prehistoric lizard rudely aroused from its sleep by the railroad builders' dynamite."{{cn|date=August <ref name="gingell"/>2022}}

Pratt's reputation as a major poet rests on his longer narrative poems, "many of which show him as a mythologizer of the Canadian male experience; but a number of shorter philosophical works also command recognition. ‘[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem2.htm From stone to steel] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164515/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem2.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}’ asserts the necessity for [[redemptive suffering]] arising from the failure of humanity's spiritual evolution to keep pace without physical evolution and cultural achievements; ‘[http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/pratt/poems/texts/161/fr161annotated.html Come away, death]’ is a complexly allusive account of the way the once-articulate and ceremonial human response to death was rendered inarticulate by the primitive violence of a sophisticated bomb; and ‘[http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem3.htm The truant] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605164422/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/poem3.htm |date=2011-06-05 }}’ dramatically presents a confrontation in a thoroughly patriarchal cosmos between the fiercely independent ‘little genus homo’ and a totalitarian mechanistic power, ‘the great Panjandrum’. Pratt's choices of forms and metrics were conservative for his time; but his diction was experimental, reflecting in its specificity and its frequent technicality both his belief in the poetic power of the accurate and concrete that led him into assiduous research processes, and his view that one of the poet's tasks is to bridge the gap between the two branches of human pursuit: the scientific and artistic."{{cn|date=August <ref name="gingell"/>2022}}

The University of Toronto's Victoria University library currently bears his name,<ref>"[http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/about_us/ About the Library]," E.J. Pratt Library. Web, Mar. 18, 2011.</ref> as do the University's E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize for poetry.<ref>"[http://apply.utoronto.ca/adm-awards/html/awards/notices/pratt_e_j.htm E. J. Pratt Medal and Prize in Poetry] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629135817/http://apply.utoronto.ca/adm-awards/html/awards/notices/pratt_e_j.htm |date=2011-06-29 }}, University of Toronto. Web, Mar. 17, 2011.</ref> Winners of the award include [[Margaret Atwood]] in 1961 and [[Michael Ondaatje]] in 1966.

The E. J. Pratt Chair in Canadian Literature was created in his name by the University of Toronto in 2003. The chair has been held since its founding by [[George Elliot Clarke]].<ref>University of Toronto [http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/main/supporting/invest-in-faculty/ej-pratt-professor E.J. Pratt Chair in Canadian Literature] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120829200103/http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/main/supporting/invest-in-faculty/ej-pratt-professor |date=2012-08-29 }}</ref>

*''The Fable of the Goats and Other Poems'', Toronto: Macmillan, [[1937 in poetry|1937]] [[Governor General's Awards|GGLA]]

*''Brebeuf and his Brethren'', Toronto: Macmillan, [[1940 in poetry|1940]]. Detroit: Basilian Press, 1942. [[Governor General's Awards|GGLA]]

*''[[Towards the Last Spike]]'', Toronto: Macmillan, [[1952 in poetry|1952]]. [[Governor General's Awards|GGLA]]

<small>Except where noted, pre-1970 information is from ''Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt ''(1968)</small>

* [httphttps://wwwcanpoetry.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/pratt/index.htm Canadian Poetry Online: E.J. Pratt] -, Biography and 6 poems (Erosion, From Stone to Steel, The Truant, Silences, The Ground Swell, The Titanic)

* {{FadedPage|id=Pratt, E. J. (Edwin John Dove)|name=E. J. (Edwin John Dove) Pratt|author=yes}}

* {{cite web|title=Maines Pincock Family fonds & Fred and Minnie Maines Library|url=https://uwaterloo.ca/library/special-collections-archives/collections/maines-pincock-family|website=University of Waterloo Library|publisher=Special Collections & Archives|accessdateaccess-date=9 February 2016}}