Charles Heavysege – författare

Saul and Selected Poems is an original and useful introduction to the work and poetic personality of Charles Heavysege (1816-76), an important but currently neglected nineteenth-century Canadian writer. Heavysege was handicapped by a limited education and a lack of public support, yet nonetheless established himself in Great Britain and America as the 'leading intellect of [the] Dominion' in a period when native literature was scantily regarded. His struggle to express himself and to find an audience for his work mirrors the dilemma of the émigré writer of his time.Heavysege's work is related in this volume to the early nineteenth-century English revival of poetic drama, and seen in the context of the Canadian cultural milieu of the 1860s. Saul is a powerful presentation of the tormented soul caught in a world of order and universal degree. Its main interest is to be found in the psychological frankness - Saul's recognition of his demon resonates with the deeper implication of the recognition of the döppelgänger - and in passages of sinewy verse written with a directness that anticipates E.J. Pratt.The text of Saul and 'Jezebel,' selections from Jephthah's Daughter, an original commentary on the major poems, a bibliography, and a review of Heavysege criticism are all included in this volume. (Literature of Canada 19)

The Advocate, an historical melodramatic romance in prose, which makes use of English and French antagonisms in Lower Canada.

A five-act tragedy in blank verse. The play is founded upon the old problem of an unnatural and ill-omened union between youth and age.

Charles Heavysege's chief and best-known work, the long-verse drama and tragedy Saul, was published in Montreal in 1857. Coventry Patmore, reviewing Saul in the North British Review, ranked it as the greatest English poem published outside Great Britain. Hawthorne, Emerson, and Longfellow were all enthusiastic in their praise, and the play went into three editions.Saul is a drama of 135 scenes containing the remarkable character of the fallen angel Malzah, who has been compared by critics to Shakespeare’s Caliban. Itis a powerful presentation of the tormented soul caught in a world of order and universal degree. Its main interest is to be found in the psychological frankness - Saul's recognition of his demon resonates with the deeper implication of the recognition of the döppelgänger - and in passages of sinewy verse written with a directness that anticipates E.J. Pratt.