Cornish Trilogy [Paperback]

Robertson Davies (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 1991

One of Canadian author Robertson Davies' most dazzling achievements, "The Cornish Trilogy" explores the life and influence of eccentric art patron Francis Cornish and comprises "The Rebel Angels", "What's Bred in the Bone" (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1986) and "The Lyre of Orpheus". Woven around the pursuits of the energetic spirits and erudite scholars of the University of St John and the Holy Ghost, the trilogy lures the reader into a world of mysticism, historical allusion and gothic fantasy. It is densely plotted, highly entertaining and fuses themes of religion, love, art and music in a glorious celebration of humanism. '...the kind of writer who makes you want to nag your friends until they read him so that they share the pleasure' - "Observer".

Editorial Reviews

Review

Deliciously readable New York Times One of the most remarkable achievements of contemporary fiction Sunday Times Nourishes the brain while it beguiles the senses Time A first-rate storyteller and a real moralist with a crackling sense of humour Newsweek Davies combines elements of the fantastic with details of everyday life to show us a world in which the miraculous coexists with the mundane New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Robertson Davies was born in Thamesville, Ontario, in 1913. A novelist, playwright, literary critic and essayist, he received numerous awards for his work. It is as a writer of fiction that Robertson Davies achieved international recognition, with such books as The Salterton Trilogy (Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice and A Mixture of Frailties); The Deptford Trilogy (Fifth Business, The Manticore and World of Wonders); The Cornish Trilogy (The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize, and The Lyre of Orpheus); Murther & Walking Spirits, and The Cunning Man. Robertson Davies died in 1995. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1152 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (June 27, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140144463
• ISBN-13: 978-0140144468
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,721,209 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even more satisfying than The Deptford Trilogy, February 25, 2001

By 

Miles D. Moore (Alexandria, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Cornish Trilogy (Paperback)

While my favorite novel by Robertson Davies remains Fifth Business, a book so dazzling it leaves me almost speechless, I feel the three novels of The Cornish Trilogy--The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone and The Lyre of Orpheus--are more satisfying in the aggregate than The Deptford Trilogy. The middle novel, What's Bred in the Bone, is the lynchpin of the trilogy--the "biography" of Francis Cornish, a wealthy art collector and restorer who in time will be suspected of being an art forger, but who in reality is a great artist of high inward purpose. To remind us of Mark Twain's dictum that a man's true biography is what goes on in his own mind, the book is narrated by the two invisible spirits who served as Cornish's guardians on Earth--the only ones who will ever know the whole truth about him. What's Bred in the Bone is sandwiched in between The Rebel Angels, about mayhem and skulduggery among a group of academics when they inherit the bountiful legacy of the late Francis Cornish, and The Lyre of Orpheus, concerning the convoluted doings when a young musical genius tries to recreate an unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann. This book features a particularly rollicking gang of characters, including E.T.A. Hoffmann himself speaking from the grave. Davies' style glistens with his trademark scholarship and wit; his Jungian philosophy, deep spirituality and often profound insights into the artistic process make these novels important works of art as well as delightful semi-satiric, semi-fantasy romps. One major complaint I have about Davies is that all his characters tend to sound like erudite, well-settled, middle-aged men--fine for the Rev. Simon Darcourt, but not for Maria Theotoky Cornish, the 23-year-old, half-Gypsy beauty. Also, some of his set pieces simply go on too long, such as the contentious "Arthurian" dinner party thrown by Arthur and Maria Cornish. However, the totality of Davies' gifts is so enormous that I'm willing to forgive him his flaws.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A frenzy of artistic expression, October 15, 2003

By 

A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cornish Trilogy (Paperback)

Robertson Davies writes like a friendly, jocose composite of every college professor you've ever had. Like Rabelais, the French Renaissance scholar who is one of the many subjects of "The Cornish Trilogy," he is amazingly learned and uses his fiction to display the staggering expanse of his knowledge, but he understands the inherent joy in reading and learning and balances his writing with equal measures of highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow humor.

These three novels revolve around a man named Francis Cornish whose wealth, talent, and connections elevate his uncommonly consequential life almost to the status of an Ontario folk legend. Growing up in a rural town called Blairlogie, he develops a sensibility for the power of visual images and becomes an artist and an art connoisseur, educating himself at the University of Toronto's College of St. John and the Holy Ghost, affectionately called Spook. After working as an art assessor and spying for the British from a Bavarian castle during World War II, he spends the rest of his life amassing a tremendous collection of art, books, and manuscripts, which he leaves to Spook and other Canadian institutes upon his death.

The trilogy's second novel, "What's Bred in the Bone," in which Cornish's life story is narrated by a Recording Angel, is like the gentle, reflective adagio of a three-movement symphony. By contrast, the first novel, "The Rebel Angels," in which three Spook professors, the executors of Cornish's will, are assigned to catalogue and distribute the bequeathal, is in a modern Rabelaisian spirit: erudite, bawdy, and perverse. The discovery of an unknown Rabelais manuscript leads to an academic uproar among Clement Hollier, his nubile graduate student Maria, and his obnoxious rival Urquhart McVarish, whose tea-time companion, the boorish ex-monk John Parlabane, will do literally anything to get his unreadable autobiographical novel published.

The third novel, "The Lyre of Orpheus," concerns itself with an unfinished opera about King Arthur by E.T.A. Hoffmann which is found among Cornish's manuscripts. As a tribute to their benefactor, the Cornish Foundation allows to have the opera completed by a filthy waif of a girl who goes by the name of Schnak and is being hailed as a musical prodigy, with the libretto penned by Simon Darcourt, Spook's resident Anglican priest. The proceedings are annotated by none other than the ghost of Hoffmann himself, trapped in Limbo because he was unable to complete his Arthurian opera, and the Cornish Foundation's effort is his only chance to pass on to the next world. As the fledgling opera goes into production, Davies gives a brilliantly colorful account of the stormy dramas and passions involved in the world of musical theater.

These novels are broad satires of the worlds of academics, art, and music, respectively, and the main characters are so fatuously self-important they almost dare the reader to hate them. The general theme is the imagined conflict between the artist and the philistine, illustrated by Hoffmann's Johannes Kreisler/Tomcat Murr alter egos, but this imaginary line is only as thick as we make it. If, as Hoffmann's ghost says, a philistine is someone who is content to live in a wholly unexplored world, then Davies's "Cornish" trilogy acts wonderfully as an antiphilistine corrective.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Lyre" deserves more credit, July 1, 2001

By 

"brybo" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cornish Trilogy (Paperback)

This review is about "The Lyre of Orpheus," the third book in The Cornish Trilogy, and a work that merits more comment than a previous reviewer's "unremarkable." Davies is one of my favorite writers. His "The Cunning Man" is excellent - a yarn within a yarn, as I've said elsewhere. "Lyre" is similar in style. Reading a Davies novel is a pastime, more rewarding than at first glance, like doing large tabletop puzzles. His characters are archetypes, and his stories repeat patterns like waltzes. The unfolding of the patterns is a reading pleasure. In "Lyre," The Cornish Foundation sponsors an opera about King Arthur. The head of the Foundation is named Arthur, and the opera and our narrative follow parallel story lines. Another element to the puzzle appears. The opera is to be staged in the 19th-century style, while a deliberately anachronistic painting enters the drama. This device abounds in Davies' novels. As a reader, you start in the middle of the onion layers and work both ways, inward to the center, penetrating the simpler layers (Arthur and Arthur), and outward from the dramatic action, finding the themes (how many anachronisms are there?), pleased as when while listening to music a melody reappears, transformed. The transformations can be as pleasant as the melody. "Lyre" isn't my favorite Davies' work, but it has the familiar elements for which I return again and again.

In most reviews I would say "read if you like this sort of thing." Not this time. Read. Put down your Anne Rice or Don DeLillo for a moment. Make a glass of lemonade and sit at the table. It will do you good to work at a puzzle for a change.