In pursuit of authority in an uncongenial age: Mentors and proteges in the fiction of Robertson Davies and John Irving.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the fiction of Robertson Davies and John Irving through the lens of mentoring theory, which emerged from American culture's fascination with mentoring in the 1970s and 1980s. By analyzing the power dynamics of fictional mentoring relationships, it demonstrates how both authors use mentoring as they attempt to claim an artistic authority they perceive as threatened by contemporary culture. It also considers the author/reader relationship as a metaphorical extension of the mentoring relationship, arguing that both authors attempt to position their implied readers as submissive proteges in order to ensure the transmission of their intended messages. Chapter One introduces the phenomenon of mentor mania and its attendant body of literature, speculating on possible reasons for the mass appeal of mentoring at that time and isolating theories that help illuminate the fiction. Chapter Two analyzes mentoring in Robertson Davies' fiction (particularly the Deptford and Cornish Trilogies), focusing on the conservative cultural agenda of mentoring and on the authoritarian interpersonal dynamics by which those goals are accomplished. Chapter Three, which focuses on What's Bred in the Bone as well as Davies' essays on reading, argues that Davies offers himself as a mentor to an implied reader-apprentice, in an attempt to inoculate the reader against unauthorized interpretations. Chapter Four analyzes the conflicted author/reader relationship as portrayed in John Irving's fiction (particularly The World According to Garp), arguing that Irving similarly attempts to constrain interpretation by portraying the ideal reader as a submissive protege. Finally, Chapter Five examines mentor/protege pairs in The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany, revealing a pattern of uncritically adoring proteges who enhance their mentors' authority and perpetuate their visions, granting them metaphorical immortality. Throughout, my goal is not to evaluate fictional mentoring relationships as if they were case studies, but to recognize mentoring as a highly charged site upon which crucial issues of authority are played out in revealing ways.