Kroetsch, Robert (Vol. 132) - Richard Lane (essay date 1993)

Richard Lane (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: “The Double Guide: Through the Labyrinth with Robert Kroetsch,” in Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, 1993, pp. 19-27.

[In the following essay, Lane examines Kroetsch's novels and poetry in order to understand his literary theory, particularly in Labyrinths of Voice.]

How do we find our way through a textual labyrinth? Already, in the etymology of its name, the notion of doubling forms part of a trace that leads us to the Minotaur and the Classical world. But readers of literary criticism know that the concept of a labyrinth can also lead into the contemporary postmodern world of uncertainty. Just over ten years ago, Robert Kroetsch published his Labyrinths of Voice (1982),1 with which some critics believed the Canadian postmodern had arrived.2 Douglas Barbour soon noted how the “questioning” of the three speakers in Labyrinths...

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