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Biography & Autobiography Educators

Professing English

A Life of Roy Daniells

by (author) Sandra Djwa

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
May 2002
Category
Educators, General, Canadian
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802047700
    Publish Date
    May 2002
    List Price
    $91.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442678798
    Publish Date
    Apr 2002
    List Price
    $91.00

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Description

Sandra Djwa has provided readers with a fascinating artifact: a cultural biography with a human face. Roy Daniells (1902-1979), an English professor who finished his career at the University of British Columbia, and an outstanding scholar, teacher and poet, influenced at least four generations of students and is the subject of Professing English. Once established as a professor, Daniells was a key figure - a cultural catalyst - in the consolidation of English as a discipline and the development of Canadian literature as a recognised body of writing and a legitimate focus of scholarship, interacting with major personalities of the era like Earle Birney, Northrop Frye, E.J. Pratt, Sinclair Ross, Margaret Laurence and A.S.P. Woodhouse.

Djwa's examination of his life is a moving personal story as well as a mini-history of literary studies in Canada. It is also the account of an individual struggling against a strict religious upbringing who turned instead to the devotional poets of the seventeenth century. In this biography, Daniells' life becomes a prism refracting aspects of the discipline - the old ties between religion and literature, the making of a professor, mentorship and the way it functioned, women in the academy and changes in the discipline and the professoriate. His devotion to English studies and his unflagging encouragement of young Canadian writers and students makes Daniells one of the greatest unsung heroes in recent history. Thanks to this wonderful biography, he will receive the recognition he so justly deserves.

About the author

Professor Djwa is the author of E.J. Pratt: The Evolutionary Vision and a biography of F. R. Scott, The Politics of the Imagination (1987). She has edited Karl Klinck’s memoirs, Karl Klinck: Giving Canada a Literary History (1991). Her biography of Roy Daniells is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press, and she is now beginning a biography of P.K. Page.

Sandra Djwa's profile page

Awards

  • Short-listed, Lorne Pierce Medal, Royal Society of Canada

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