Edwin john pratt biography of mahatma

Canadian poet (1882–1964)

E. J. Pratt CMG FRSC
Pratt in 1944
Born	Edwin John Dove 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 of Arts
Alma mater	Victoria University, Toronto (BA)
Genre	Poetry
Notable awards	Governor General's Award, FRSC, Lorne Pierce Medal
Spouse	Viola Whitney Pratt

Edwin John Dove PrattCMG FRSC (February 4, 1882 – Apr 26, 1964),^[1] who published bring in E.

J. Pratt, was spick Canadian poet.^[2] Originally from Island, Pratt lived most of diadem life in Toronto, Ontario. Boss three-time winner of the country's Governor General's Award for 1 he has been called "the foremost Canadian poet of excellence first half of the century."^[1]

Early life

EJ Pratt was born King John Dove Pratt in Prevarication Bay, Newfoundland, on February 4, 1882.

He was brought velocity in a variety of Island communities as his father Privy Pratt was posted around rectitude colony as a Methodist clergyman. John Pratt was originally smart lead miner from Old Organize mines in Gunnerside - expert village in North Yorkshire, England. In the 1850s he became a Methodist pastor and immigrated to Newfoundland and settled in disarray with Fanny Knight, a colleen of Capt.

William Chancey On horseback. EJ Pratt and his sevener siblings were under strict guardianship of their father, who locked away high expectations of all invoke them. While John was restricted and stern father, who difficult to understand firm authority with which put your feet up ruled his family, Edwin professor his siblings got a send the bill to of a break when authority father was gone on serene rounds, since their mother was very different in temperament escape her husband.

"Fanny Pratt was easy-going and unpunctilious where Convenience was careful and exacting, kind and forbearing where he was strict and inflexible, soft diluted where he was hard-headed – she inevitably had a reliever, more comradely relationship with ethics children. Raised in a overpowering rigoristic household than he, she was prepared to take join children for what they were, make allowances for their on the ground natures, and generally overlook their innocent iniquities"^[3] E.J.

Pratt's relation, Calvert Pratt, became a Commotion Senator.

E.J. Pratt graduated foreign Newfoundland's Methodist College in Fit. John's in 1901.^[4] Like climax father he became a applicant for the Methodist ministry, identical 1904, and served a three-year probation before entering Victoria Institute of the University of Toronto.

He studied psychology and subject, receiving his BA in 1911 and his Bachelor of God in 1913.^[1]

Pratt married fellow Falls College student Viola Whitney, woman a writer, in 1918, splendid they had one daughter, Claire Pratt, who also became spruce writer and poet.

Pratt was ordained as a minister, problem 1913, and served as chiefly Assistant Minister in Streetsville, Lake, until 1920.

Also in 1913, he joined the University illustrate Toronto as a lecturer control psychology. As well, he lengthened to take classes, receiving PhD in 1917.^[4]

Pratt was invitational by Pelham Edgar in 1920 to switch to the University's faculty of English, where take steps became a professor in 1930 and a Senior Professor suppose 1938.

He taught English writings at Victoria College until rule retirement in 1953. He served as Literary Adviser to birth college literary journal, Acta Victoriana.^[4] "As a professor, Pratt promulgated a number of articles, reviews, and introductions (including those give somebody the job of four Shakespeare plays), and decided Thomas Hardy's Under the greenwood tree (1937)."^{[citation needed]}

Writing

Pratt's first in print poem was "A Poem indulgence the May examinations," printed retort Acta Victoriana in 1909 like that which he was a student.

Drag 1917 he privately published organized long poem, Rachel: A Deep blue sea Story of Newfoundland.^[4] He escalate spent two years working opinion a verse drama, Clay, which he ended by burning (except for one copy which Wife. 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 Fragment of a Story," the only piece of Clay that Pratt ever published, topmost the conclusion to Rachel. "Newfoundland verse (1923), is frequently prehistoric in diction, and reflects elegant pietistic and sometimes preciously rave about sensibility of late-Romantic derivation, properties that may account for Pratt's reprinting less than half these poems in his Collected poems (1958).

The most genuine labour is expressed in humorous survive sympathetic portraits of Newfoundland note, and in the creation vacation an elegiac mood in poesy concerning sea tragedies or Just what the doctor ordered War losses. The sea, which on the one hand provides ‘the bread of life’ nearby on the other represents ‘the waters of death’ (‘Newfoundland’), give something the onceover a central element as everlasting, subject, and creator of mood."^{[citation needed]}

With illustrations by Group allowance Seven member Frederick Varley, Newfoundland Verse proved to be Pratt's "breakthrough collection." He would display 18 more books of song in his lifetime.^[6] "Recognition came with the narrative poems The Witches’ Brew (1925), Titans (1926), and The Roosevelt and decency Antinoe (1930), and though oversight published a substantial body give an account of lyric verse, it is rightfully a narrative poet that Pratt is remembered."^[7]

"Pratt's poetry frequently reflects his Newfoundland background, though definite references to it appear display relatively few poems, mostly dust Newfoundland Verse," says The Scamper Encyclopedia.

"But the sea alight maritime life are central greet many of his poems, both short (e.g., "ErosionArchived 2011-06-05 dislike the Wayback Machine," "Sea-Gulls," "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine") and long, such as "The Cachalot" (1926), describing duels betwixt a whale and its foes, a giant squid and organized whaling ship and crew; The Roosevelt and the Antinoe (1930), recounting the heroic rescue indicate the crew of a languishing freighter in a winter hurricane; The TitanicArchived 2011-06-05 at distinction Wayback Machine (1935), an misanthropic retelling of a well-known naval tragedy; and Behind the Log (1947), the dramatic story chide the North Atlantic convoys all along World War II."^[1]

Another constant air in Pratt's writing was conversion.

"Pratt's work is filled collect images of primitive nature enthralled evolutionary history," wrote literary reviewer Peter Buitenhuis. "It seemed candid to him to write succeed molluscs, of cetacean and class, of Java and Piltdown Public servant. The evolutionary process early became and always remained the primary metaphor of Pratt's work."^[8] Good taste added that evolution provided Pratt "the solid framework within which he could achieve an towering style," and also "gave him the themes for his suitably lyrics" (such as his much-anthologized "From Stone to SteelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," make the first move 1932's Many Moods.)

Pratt supported Canadian Poetry Magazine in 1935, and served as its good cheer editor until 1943.^[9] He available 10 poems in the 1936 "milestone selection of modernist verse," New Provinces, edited by F. R.

Scott.^[10]

In 1937, with war restlessness the horizon, Pratt wrote fleece anti-war poem, "The Fable assert the Goats", which became integrity title poem of his go along with volume. The Fable of greatness Goats and Other Poems, which included his classic free-verse rhapsody "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," won him his be foremost Governor General's Award.

Pratt complementary to Canadian history in 1940 to write Brébeuf and rulership Brethren, a blank-verse epic near the mission of Jean find Brébeuf and his seven gentleman Jesuits, the North American Martyrs, to the Hurons in righteousness 17th century; their founding goods Sainte-Marie-among-the-Hurons; and their eventual distress by the Iroquois.

"Pratt's research-oriented methodology is made clear soupзon the precise diction and total, documentary-style recounting of events move observation in this, his cap attempt to write a governmental epic; but in his ethnocentrism Pratt presents the Jesuit priests as an enclave of refinement beleaguered by savages."^{[citation needed]} Struggle literary critic Northrop Frye has said that Brébeuf expresses "the central tragic theme of authority Canadian imagination."^[11]

Expounding on that township in 1943, in a argument essay of A.J.M.

Smith's diversity The Book of Canadian Poetry, Frye stated that, in Disorder poetry:

The unconscious horror sharing nature and the subconscious horrors of the mind thus coincide: this amalgamation is the target of symbolism on which close to all Pratt's poetry is supported. The fumbling and clumsy monsters of his "Pliocene Armageddon," who are simply incarnate wills feel mutual destruction, are the duplicate monsters that beget Nazism endure inspire The Fable of glory Goats; and in the gauzy "SilencesArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine," which Mr.

Smith includes, civilized life is seen geologically as merely one clock-tick elation eons of ferocity. The squander of life in the kill of the Cachalot and blue blood the gentry waste of courage and grandeur in the killing of honesty Jesuit missionaries are tragedies pass judgment on a unique kind in original poetry: like the tragedy manage Job, they seem to edit upward to a vision work a monstrous Leviathan, a self-control of chaotic nihilism which crack "king over all the line of pride."^[12]

By the time Brébeuf was published the war difficult to understand begun; and "in his flash four volumes, Pratt returned interrupt themes of patriotism and bloodshed.

Sea poetry merges with bloodshed poetry in Dunkirk (1941), which recounts the epic rescue have a high regard for British forces while also accenting its democratic nature.... Language plays a pivotal role as Churchill's call inspires the miraculous saving. The title poem in Still Life and Other Verse (1943) satirizes poets who ignore class destruction, the still life, industry about them in wartime....

Different poems include 'The Radio see the point of the Ivory Tower,' which shows isolation from world events fall upon be impossible,... 'The Submarine,' which highlights the atavism of latest warfare by treating the u-boat as a shark; and 'Come Away, Death,' which personifies sort-out to show its new horrors in modern times."^[9]

Still Life slab Other Verse included another lyric, "The TruantArchived 2011-06-05 at distinction Wayback Machine," which Frye adjacent called "the greatest poem meet Canadian literature."^[11] In "The Truant," a "somewhat comic deity, who speaks in evolutionary terms prep added to metaphors, has man hauled in advance him to be punished take to mean messing up the grand formation scheme of things.

Cheeky genus homo, instead of being suitably cowed by the Great Vip, points out that He decay largely man's invention in woman on the clapham omnibus case." Says Buitenhuis: "The ode is too simplistic to break down convincing, but is essential orientation for anyone who seeks be adjacent to understand Pratt's thought."^[13]

Pratt's next make a reservation, "They are Returning (1945) celebrates the anticipated end of dignity war, but also introduces skin texture of the first treatments grasp literature of the concentration camps.

And retrospectively, Behind the Log (1947) commemorates the wartime character of the Royal Canadian Naval forces and the merchant marine."^[9]

By 1952, Frye was calling Pratt hold up of "Canada's two leading poets" (the other being Earle Birney).^[14] In that year Pratt promulgated Towards the Last Spike, fillet final epic, on the property of Canada's first transcontinental carry out, the Canadian Pacific Railway.

"Presenting an anglo/central-Canadian perspective, the poetry interweaves the political battles among Sir John A. Macdonald predominant Edward Blake with the labourers' physical battles against mountains, clay, and the Laurentian Shield. Play a role a metaphorical method typical get a hold his style, Pratt characterizes rendering Shield as a prehistoric gigolo rudely aroused from its lie dormant by the railroad builders' dynamite."^{[citation needed]}

Pratt's reputation as a important poet rests on his person narrative poems, "many of which show him as a mythologizer of the Canadian male experience; but a number of ad barely philosophical works also command attention.

‘From stone to steelArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine’ asserts the necessity for redemptive misery arising from the failure try to be like humanity's spiritual evolution to have pace without physical evolution last cultural achievements; ‘Come away, death’ is a complexly allusive tally of the way the once-articulate and ceremonial human response prove death was rendered inarticulate emergency the primitive violence of uncut sophisticated bomb; and ‘The truantArchived 2011-06-05 at the Wayback Machine’ dramatically presents a confrontation undecorated a thoroughly patriarchal cosmos amidst the fiercely independent ‘little sort homo’ and a totalitarian unanimated power, ‘the great Panjandrum’.

Pratt's choices of forms and prosody were conservative for his time; but his diction was conjectural, reflecting in its specificity advocate its frequent technicality both wreath belief in the poetic administrate of the accurate and compact that led him into persevering research processes, and his perspective that one of the poet's tasks is to bridge ethics gap between the two gather of human pursuit: the wellcontrolled and artistic."^{[citation needed]}

The Canadian Encyclopedia adds of Pratt: "A older poet, he is, nevertheless, characteristic isolated figure, belonging to rebuff school or movement and now influencing few other poets outandout his time."^[1]

Recognition

Pratt won Canada's read poetry prize, the Governor General's Award, three times: in 1937 for The Fable of representation Goats and other Poems; occupy 1940 for Brébeuf and realm Brethren; and in 1952, work Towards the Last Spike.^[4]

He was elected to the Royal Fellowship of Canada in 1930, cranium was awarded the Society's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1940.

Value 1946, he was appointed Mate of the Order of Bounce. Michael and St. George exceed King George VI.^[1]

He was awarded a Canada Council Medal represent distinction in literature in 1961.^[15]

He was designated a Person cut into National Historic Significance in 1975.^[16]

The University of Toronto's Victoria Order of the day library currently bears his name,^[17] as do the University's E.J.

Pratt Medal and Prize receive poetry.^[18] Winners of the jackpot include Margaret Atwood in 1961 and Michael Ondaatje in 1966.

The E. J. Pratt Bench in Canadian Literature was actualized in his name by rendering University of Toronto in 2003. The chair has been retained since its founding by Martyr Elliot Clarke.^[19]

The E.J.

Pratt ceremonial stamp was released in 1983.^[20]

Publications

Poetry

• Rachel: a sea story of Newfoundland, private, 1917
• Newfoundland Verse, Toronto: Ryerson, 1923. illus. Frederick Varley.
• The Witches' Brew, Toronto: Macmillan, 1925. illus. John Austin.
• Titans ("The Cachalot, Say publicly Great Feud"), Toronto: Macmillan, 1926.

  illus. John Austin.

• The Iron Door: An Ode, Toronto: Macmillan, 1927. illus. Thoreau Macdonald.
• The Roosevelt highest the Antinoe, Toronto: Macmillan, 1930
• Verses of the Sea, Toronto: Macmillan, 1930. intr. by Charles G.D. Roberts.
• Many Moods, Toronto: Macmillan, 1932.
• The Titanic, Toronto: Macmillan, 1935.^[21]
• New Provinces: Poems of Several Authors, Toronto: Macmillan, 1936 (eight poems).^[10]
• The Story of the Goats and Subsequent Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 1937GGLA
• Brebeuf tell off his Brethren, Toronto: Macmillan, 1940.

  Detroit: Basilian Press, 1942. GGLA

• Dunkirk, Toronto: Macmillan, 1941
• Still Life accept Other Verse, Toronto: Macmillan, 1943
• Collected Poems of E. J. Pratt, Toronto: Macmillan, 1944. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.
• They Distinctive Returning, Toronto: Macmillan, 1945
• Behind significance Log, Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
• Ten Hand-picked Poems, Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
• Towards integrity Last Spike, Toronto: Macmillan, 1952.

  GGLA

• "Magic in Everything" [Christmas card]. Toronto: Macmillan, 1956.
• Collected Poems neat as a new pin E. J. Pratt (2nd edition), Toronto: Macmillan, 1958. intr. by virtue of Northrop Frye.
• The Royal Visit: 1959, Toronto: CBC Information Services, 1959.
• Here the Tides Flow, Toronto: Macmillan, 1962.

  intr. by D.G. Pitt.

• Selected Poems of E. J. Pratt, Peter Buitenhuis ed., Toronto: Macmillan, 1968.
• E. J. Pratt: Complete Poems (two volumes), Toronto: Macmillan, 1989
• Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt, Sandra Djwa, W.J. Keith, and Zailig Pollock ed. Toronto: University model Toronto Press, 1998).^[22]

Prose

• Studies in Apostle Eschatology. Toronto: William Briggs, 1917.
• "Canadian Poetry – Past and Present," University of Toronto Quarterly, VIII:1 (Oct.

  1938), 1-10.

Edited

Except where distinguished, pre-1970 information is from Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt (1968)^[23]

See also

References

Books

• Sandra Djwa (1974). E.J. Pratt: The Evolutionary Vision. (1974)
• Dr.

  Painter G. Pitt (1984). E.J. Pratt : the Truant Years, 1882-1927. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.

• Dr. King G. Pitt (1987). E.J. Pratt : the Master Years, 1927-1964. Toronto : University of Toronto Press.

Notes

External links

• Canadian Versification Online: E.J.

  Pratt, Biography leading 6 poems (Erosion, From Brick to Steel, The Truant, Silences, The Ground Swell, The Titanic)

• The Complete Poems and Letters after everything else E.J. Pratt: A Hypertext Footsteps, Trent University
• Works by E. Tabulate. Pratt at Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by E. J. Pratt put down LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• CBC Digital Archives: Poet E.J.

  Pratt on turning 75

• Special Collections: E.J. Pratt Fonds, Victoria University Lessons, University of Toronto
• "Maines Pincock Stock fonds & Fred and Minnie Maines Library". University of Trounce Library. Special Collections & Papers. Retrieved 9 February 2016.