Eros and Thanatos in the Novels of Robertson Davies

Abstract

The core of this thesis inheres in the notion that Robertson Davies consistently envisions society as a battlefield on which two antithetical forces continually strive; those forces are Eros (Life) and Thanatos (Death).

Although this thesis looks specifically at the novels, the introductory chapter deals with some of the plays in relation to the values that gravitate around each pole. In general, Thanatos, which grips Canadian society, is dominated by the intellect, to the exclusion of the emotions; Eros, on the other hand, is concerned with the sources of pleasure; thus, those who are Eros-men are connected in some way with the arts, or, in the later novels, with magic and the unconscious.

The novels themselves trace the movement of Davies's mind from the severely reductive view of society in Tempest-Tost and Leaven of Malice to the more sympathetic treatment of man in Fifth Business and The Manticore. The Eros-Thanatos conflict, however, never disappears from Davies's thought. It merely becomes slightly submerged in Fifth Business and The Manticore.