Hugh MacLennan

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John Hugh MacLennan (born March 20, 1907 in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia , †  November 9, 1990 in Montréal ) was a Canadian writer, essayist and English professor at McGill University . His work has received five Governor General's Awards . MacLennan is considered to be the first major Anglophone writer to portray Canada's " national character ".

Life and work

MacLennan was born in Glace Bay in 1907. There his father, Samuel MacLennan, worked as a doctor in a mining company. After the MacLennans had spent several months in London in 1913 for their father's medical training , they moved to Halifax . MacLennan attended Tower Road School there from 1914. As a ten-year-old he survived the explosion in Halifax Harbor on December 6, 1917, which killed at least 1,946 people and injured several thousand.

In 1924 MacLennan graduated from the Halifax County Academy. Because of his excellent school achievements, he received the Yeoman Prize in Latin and Greek and a study scholarship. From 1924 to 1928 he studied classical studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax. For his BA degree, MacLennan received the Governor-General's Gold Medal for Classics and a Rhodes Scholarship , which allowed him to continue studying for four years at Oriel College, Oxford University . There he began to write poems, which he unsuccessfully sent to London publishers in 1931. From 1932 MacLennan wrote his doctoral thesis at Princeton University .

During his studies he traveled to Germany, France, Greece, Italy and Switzerland. On the way back to Canada he met his future wife Dorothy Duncan from Illinois . In 1934 MacLennan finished work on his first novel So All Their Praises . This was approved by Vail Bailou Press, but the publisher went before publication in bankruptcy , prompting MacLennan started writing a new novel. In 1935 he was awarded for his work Oxyrhynchus: An Economic and Social Study the doctorate and became a teacher of Latin and history at Lower Canada College (near Montreal).

After Dorothy Duncan and John Hugh MacLennan got married in Wilmette in 1936 , they moved to Montréal . In 1937 they jointly joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation Party. In the same year they traveled through the Soviet Union and Scandinavia . In 1938 MacLennan finished work on his second novel A Man Should Rejoice and unsuccessfully sent it to several publishers.

His wife Dorothy convinced him to start writing about Canada instead of Europe or the US: “Nobody will understand Canada until they develop their own literature, and you are the one who will start to update Canadian novels . “In his third novel, Barometer Rising , which appeared as his debut in 1941 , he processed a. a. the Halifax explosion that he witnessed in 1917. The novel was placed on the index in 1961 for using vulgar language in the province of Manitoba . MacLennan also received letters attacking him because of his heroine's extramarital affair .

In 1945 Two Solitudes appeared . The novel, set in Québec from 1917 to 1939, depicts the tense coexistence of Anglophone and Francophone Canadians, among other things. a. in relation to the different religions ( Protestants , Catholics ), the conscription crisis of 1917 and the industrialization of rural Québec. The allegorical "two loneliness" of the book title became the catchphrase for the social and cultural isolation of Anglo Canadians and French Canadians due to insufficient communication and prejudice. The novel was a bestseller in North America and earned MacLennan his first Governor General's Award for Fiction .

MacLennan quit teaching at Lower Canada College to become a full-time writer. In 1948 he received his second Governor General's Award for Fiction for the novel The Precipice , and in 1949 he won his first Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction with Cross Country . He had put together the collection of essays Cross Country in order to be able to pay the medical expenses for the treatment of his wife suffering from cancer.

In 1951 MacLennan became an advisor to the National Film Board of Canada . From 1951 he taught at the Department of English at McGill University in Montréal. In 1953 he became a member of the Royal Society of Canada . After the death of his wife Dorothy Duncan (1957), he married Aline Walker in 1959. He received another Governor General's Award for non-fiction for the collection of essays Thirty and Three in 1954, and the novel The Watch That Ends the Night earned him his fifth Governor General's Award in 1959. In 1967 MacLennan was named Companion of the Order of Canada (CC) for his literary services .

In 1980 MacLennan finished teaching at McGill University; in the same year he published his seventh and final novel Voices in Time . In 1983, MacLennan was elected chairman of the Canadian PEN section. In 1984 he received the Royal Bank Award, worth CAD 100,000  . In 1987, the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni awarded him the Princeton University , the James Madison Medal.

MacLennan died on November 9, 1990 at his Montréal home. In his memory, the Quebec Writers' Federation has awarded the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction since 1991 .

The "two solitudes"

“He saw the whole truth:… It meant that no French-Canadian could become anything among the English. Either you copied the English in every way, or they ignored you at all ... The English took whatever they liked. They owned big business. They owned the army, the railways, the banks; everything was theirs. "

- Two Solitudes, 1957, p. 159 :

Trivia

As a student, MacLennan was a successful tennis player. In 1928 he won the championship of Halifax and Nova Scotia in the men's doubles , 1929, the Maritimes championship in the men single and 1930, the Oxford University championship in men's singles.

Both the future writer Marian Engel and Robert Kroetsch and Leonard Cohen were MacLennan's students at McGill University.

Honors (selection)

Works (selection)

Novels
  • Man should rejoice , a critical edition by Hugh MacLennan; edited and with an introduction by Colin Hill, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, April 2019, ISBN 978-0-7766-2799-1
  • Barometer Rising. Duel, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1941
    • Übers. Jutta Knust, Theodor Knust: Return to Penelope. Goverts, Stuttgart 1963; as well as various book clubs
  • Two solitudes. Duel, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1945
  • The Precipice. Duel, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1948
  • Each Man's Son. Little, Brown, 1951
  • The Watch That Ends the Night. Scribner, New York 1959
  • The Return of the Sphinx. Scribner, New York 1967
    • Übers. Inge Wiskott: Restless summer. Novel. Goverts, 1968; as well as various book clubs
  • Voices in Time. Macmillan, Toronto 1980
Non-fiction
  • Oxyrhynchus: An Economic and Social Study. (Dissertation) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1935.
  • Cross country. Toronto: Collins, 1949
  • Thirty and Three. Toronto: Macmillan, 1954; ed. by Dorothy Duncan
  • The Future of the Novel as an Art Form. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959
  • Scotchman's Return and Other Essays. Toronto: Macmillan, 1960
  • Seven Rivers of Canada. New York: Scribner, 1961
  • The Other Side of Hugh MacLennan: selected essays old and new. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1978; Ed. Elspeth Cameron.
  • On Being a Maritime Writer. Sackville (New Brunswick): Mount Allison University, 1984

Film adaptations

  • Roger Blais, Each Man's Son (1954)
  • Lionel Chetwynd , Two Solitudes (1978)

literature

in German
  • Walter E. Riedel: Hugh MacLennans "literary maps" , in dsb. The literary image of Canada. Bouvier, Cologne 1980, pp. 72-75
  • Hermann Boeschenstein: Hugh MacLennan, a Canadian novelist. Journal of English and American Studies, 8, issue 2, May 1960, pp. 117-135
in other languages
  • Frank M. Tierney (Ed.): Hugh MacLennan . University of Ottawa Press, Ottawa 1994 ISBN 978-0776603896
  • Helen Hoy: Hugh MacLennan and His Works . ECW Press, Ontario 1990 ISBN 1-55022-030-6
  • Mari Peepre-Bordessa Hugh MacLennan's National Trilogy: Mapping a Canadian Identity (1940–1950) . Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki 1990 ISBN 951-41-0614-8
  • George Woodcock : Introducing Hugh MacLennan's Barometer Rising: a reader's guide . ECW Press, Toronto 1989 ISBN 1550221140
  • Thomas Donald MacLulich: Hugh MacLennan . Twayne, Farmington Hills (Michigan) 1983 ISBN 978-0805765557
  • Elspeth Cameron: Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life . University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1981 ISBN 0-8020-5556-7
  • Robert H. Cockburn: The Novels of Hugh MacLennan. Harvest House, Eugene (Oregon) 1969 ISBN 978-0887721083

Documentaries

  • Robert A. Duncan, Hugh MacLennan: Portrait of a Writer (1982).
  • Robert A. Duncan, View from the Typewriter (1983).
  • Robert A. Duncan, The Canadian Observer: An Introduction to Hugh MacLennan (1985).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Hugh MacLennan ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
  2. ↑ a b c d e The Hugh MacLennan Papers Online Project: Chronology (1907-1939) at: digital.library.mcgill.ca, accessed on August 19, 2015 (English).
  3. ↑ Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book at: novascotia.ca, accessed on August 19, 2015 (English).
  4. ^ A b William Connor, "MacLennan, Hugh" in: Tracy Chevalier (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the Essay . London: Routledge, 1997 ISBN 978-1884964305 pp. 509-510; Online at: danassays.wordpress.com, accessed August 19, 2015.
  5. ↑ Michael Gnarowski, "Chronology", in: Hugh MacLennan, Voices in Time . McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008 ISBN 978-0-7735-2494-1 p. Xii. NB: Occasionally, Winnetka (Illinois) is given as the location of the wedding. a. in The Hugh MacLennan Papers Online Project . The Winnetka and Wilmette parishes are adjacent to each other in Cook County , Illinois.
  6. ↑ "Nobody's going to understand Canada until she evolves a literature of her own, and you're the fellow to start bringing Canadian novels up to date.", Quoted from: Elspeth Cameron, Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life . Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981 ISBN 0-8020-5556-7 p. 133.
  7. ↑ Patricia A. Morley, The immoral moralists: Hugh MacLennan and Leonard Cohen Toronto: Clarke, Irwin & Company, 1972 ISBN 978-0772005816 p. 13.
  8. ↑ The title goes back to a translated quote from Rainer Maria Rilke , which MacLennan prefixed the novel; In the German original: "Love, which consists in the fact that two solitudes protect, border and greet one another" from Rilke's letter to Franz Xaver Kappus, Rome, on May 14, 1904.
  9. ↑ two solitudes at: thefreedictionary.com, accessed on August 20, 2015 (English).
  10. ↑ a b c d e The Hugh MacLennan Papers Online Project: Chronology (1941−1993) at: digital.library.mcgill.ca, accessed on August 19, 2015 (English).
  11. ↑ Hugh MacLennan Facts at biography.yourdictionary.com, accessed August 20, 2015.
  12. ^ Order of Canada: Hugh MacLennan, CC, CQ, Ph.D. at: archive.gg.ca, accessed on August 19, 2015 (English).
  13. ↑ Previous Award Recipients: The James Madison Medal at: alumni.princeton.edu, accessed on August 19, 2015 (English).
  14. ↑ About the QWF Literary Awards at: qwf.org, accessed on August 20, 2015 (English).
  15. ↑ He could see the truth even if ignorant people couldn't. And the truth was that under the English a French-Canadian could not become great. You had to imitate the English or they refused to look at you. ... the English took what they wanted. They had the big business. They had the army, the railroads, the banks, they had everything.
  16. ↑ Christl Verduyn (ed.), Dear Marian, Dear Hugh: The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence . Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1995 ISBN 978-0776604039 pp. 1-3.
  17. ↑ Lorne Pierce Medal at: nndb.com, accessed on August 19, 2015 (English).
  18. ↑ Hugh MacLennan at: quebecbooks.qwf.org, accessed on August 19, 2015 (English).
  19. ↑ The work describes the intellectual and cultural boundaries that separate French-Canadians and Anglo-Canadians, Catholics and Anglicans there from one another.
personal data
SURNAME MacLennan, Hugh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES MacLennan, John Hugh
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Glace Bay, Nova Scotia
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1990
Place of death Montréal