For David Staunton in The Manticore, reason has overpowered his ability to feel for Parlabane in The Rebel Angels, feelings and emotions have made his intellectual life a hollow pretense. The “gypsy” in each individual (a subject at the center of The Rebel Angels) must be answered to, or else an imbalance will turn life sour. Giving both of the main characters’ human impulses their proper due, Davies finds the fissure in their marriage and wedges his humor into the gap, penetrating the surface of their union to reveal the weakness of one and the domination of the other. Another way to clarify the duality of Davies’ view is to make use of the central “grid” in The Manticore: reason versus feeling. The theatrical metaphors from his early work come forward whenever Davies’ novels are to be described: Behind the scenes, his cast of characters perform their roles even more effectively than on the stage of their professional lives, but Davies, often in his fictive personas of Dunstan Ramsay and, in the later trilogy, Simon Darcourt, is there to unmask them and make them laugh at themselves.ĭavies perceives a basic duality in human nature and exploits the tensions between the two sides to produce novelistic excitement and philosophical insight.

Interplays of the formal with the specific-officious academia versus lovable satyr-professor, self-important charitable foundation versus reclusive forger-artist, elaborately constructed “magic” paraphernalia versus truly gifted magician, Viennese Jungian psychology versus painfully intimate self-exploration-are the pairings that make the novels come alive. At the core of Robertson Davies’ (1913-1995) novels is a sense of humor that reduces pompous institutional values to a refreshing individuality.

Fifth business novel