Not Needing All the Words : Michael Ondaatje's Literature of Silence

Reading selected texts by Michael Ondaatje, including the novels In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient and the poem "Birch Bark," Annick Hillger demonstrates how his writing both answers and challenges attempts to delineate the idea of a Canadian national self. She sets Ondaatje's work within the context of theoretical and philosophical ideas, developing the notion of a "literature of silence" concerned with finding a ground for self beyond the realm of language. Not Needing all the Words looks at Ondaatje's work in relation to the post-Cartesian idea of the modern subject as split and alienated. Highlighting the distinction between aesthesis and logic, Hillger traces the ways in which Ondaatje responds to the continuing process of silencing art in the modern age of reason. Contents Acknowledgments Preface Abbreviations Introduction: Reading “Birch Bark” – How to Mourn the Loss of the Logos PART ONE: AN AESTHETICS OF SILENCE 1 Orpheus Is Dismembered 2 Writing Disaster: “Stars Who Implode into Silence” 3 “Moving to the Clear”: A Poetics of Process 4 The Dionysian Principle of Becoming PART TWO: SILENCING MYTHS OF IDENTITY 5 The Young Poet and the Fathers of Can.lit. 6 The “Sphinx of the Unknown Land” Is a “Dainty Monster” 7 Odysseus Is Never Returning PART THREE: WEAVERS IN A SEA OF SILENCE 8 An Archaeology of the “Forgotten Mother”: Lilith and Ishtar 9 The Art of Healing: Mary, Conredemptrix Conclusion: “This Sweet Touch from the World” Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T V W Y Z "This is the first study of the quest for self and Canadian identity in the fiction and poetry of Michael Ondaatje. Reading selected texts by Ondaatje, including the novels In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient and the poem "Birch Bark," Annick Hillger demonstrates how Ondaatje's writing both answers and challenges attempts to delineate the idea of a Canadian national self. She sets his work within the context of theoretical and philosophical ideas, developing the notion of a "literature of silence" that is concerned with finding a ground for self beyond the realm of language." --Résumé de l'éditeur "This is the first study of the quest for self and Canadian identity in the fiction and poetry of Michael Ondaatje. Reading selected texts by Ondaatje, including the novels In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient and the poem "Birch Bark," Annick Hillger demonstrates how Ondaatje's writing both answers and challenges attempts to delineate the idea of a Canadian national self. She sets his work within the context of theoretical and philosophical ideas, developing the notion of a "literature of silence" that is concerned with finding a ground for self beyond the realm of language."--Jacket