Callaghan, Morley - Justin D. Edwards (essay date 1998)
Justin D. Edwards (essay date 1998)
SOURCE: Edwards, Justin D. “Strange Fugitive, Strange City: Reading Urban Space in Morley Callaghan's Toronto.” Studies in Canadian Literature 23, no. 1 (1998): 213-27.
[In the following essay, Edwards considers Callaghan's portrayal of Toronto in his novel Strange Fugitive.]
The City is of Night; perchance of Death, But certainly of Night
(Thomson 34)
I am … a citizen of no mean city
(Acts 21:39)
If, as Steven Marcus claims, “the city continues to be a text,” it is a text fraught with ambiguities, paradoxes, and contradictions (234). Marcus goes on to articulate the contradictory tensions inherent in reading the city-as-text by noting that “the city is at once sordid, corrupt, ruinous, terrible, contaminating, and still a place of wonders, magic, marvels, and ‘reality’” (233). The illegibility of...
[The entire page is 6364 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
