They Have Bodies, by Barney Allen
A Critical Edition
Publie en 1929 et presque instantanement censure par les services de police de la ville de Toronto, cet ouvrage, intitule They Have Bodies, a ete completement neglige par des generations d'ecrivains et de chercheurs, par ailleurs habituellement sensibles aux creations de l'avant-garde canadienne. En fait, ce n'est pas seulement l'extreme innovation formelle de ce roman qui surprend et saisit de prime abord, mais aussi l'attention particuliere que l'auteur prete au comportement deprave et licencieux de l'elite torontoise. Dans cet ouvrage, Barney Allen revele l'hypocrisie morale de cette elite aristocratique et religieuse ainsi que les moyens auxquels elle recourt pour masquer sa monstrueuse duplicite. Cette violente critique sociale, alliee a un humour noir des plus decapants, etait sans doute trop corrosive pour les lecteurs canadiens de cette epoque. Cependant, ce roman correspond exactement au type d'ouvrages, profondement enfouis dans les archives, que des lecteurs, des ecrivains et des chercheurs canadiens contemporains esperent ardemment exhumer et redecouvrir. En fait, ce texte avant-gardiste constitue un veritable joyau de perspicacite, d'innovation et de hardiesse. Cette nouvelle edition vous permettra de decouvrir un des romans les plus singuliers et les plus audacieux du XXesiecle. Ce livre est publie en anglais. - Published in 1929, and almost instantly censored by the Toronto City Police, They Have Bodies has been completely overlooked by generations of scholars and writers interested in the Canadian avant-garde. It is not just the novel's extreme formal innovation that is immediately startling about They Have Bodies. There is also its close attention to the depraved, licentious behaviour of Toronto's elite, its revelation of moral hypocrisy, and its exposure of the means by which aristocratic and church power provides succour to egregious duplicity. Its social criticism and dark humour were too much for Canadian readers at the time. It is, however, exactly the kind of book contemporary Canadian readers, writers, and scholars hope lies buried in the archives waiting to be recovered. A gem of insight, innovation, and novelty: finally, here is a new edition of one of the rarest, wildest books of the twentieth century. This book is published in English
Gregory Betts is a scholar, editor, and experimental poet with collections published in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Ireland. He is most acknowledged for If Language (Book*hug, 2005), a collection of paragraph-length anagrams, and The Others Raisd in Me (Pedlar, 2009), 150 poems carved out of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 150. His other books explore conceptual, collaborative, and concrete poetics. He has lectured and performed internationally, including at the Sorbonne Université, the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, the National Library of Ireland, and the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games as part of the “Cultural Olympiad,” among others. He is a professor of Canadian and avant-garde literature at Brock University, where he has produced two of the most exhaustive academic studies of avant-garde writing in Canada, Avant- Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations (2013) and Finding Nothing: The VanGardes, 1959–1975 (2020), both published with University of Toronto Press. He has served as the President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE), the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin, and the Chancellor’s Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University. He is currently the curator of the bpNichol.ca Digital Archive and Associate Director of the Social Justice Research Initiative.
