Name: The Rebel Angels
Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
ISBN: 9780140062700

Robertson Davies

, defrocked monks, mad professors, and wealthy eccentrics-a remarkable cast peoples Robertson Davies' brilliant spectacle of theft, perjury, murder, scholarship, and love at a modern university. Only Mr. Davies, author of Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, could have woven together their destinies with such wit, humour-and wisdom.

The Rebel Angels

Edwin Lang

I enjoyed Robertson Davies’ The Rebel Angels very much: it was a deep, quiet and almost insidious read. Davies, erudite, intellectual, mischievous, academic is above all a storyteller. I got the sense that of all the characters in this story his favorite may have been the character ‘Parlabane’ who believed there is more to gaining knowledge than that found in being rational, exhibiting high intelligence, being orthodox and following all conventional proprieties, that there is the dark side to be harvested too: one’s instinct and intuition, one’s family history and roots and the superstitions we hold fast to and the supernatural, and perhaps rather than having tortured, hanged and burned our witches at Salem and elsewhere we should have listened to them and revered them. The Rebel Angels are those whom God kicked out of heaven and who instead of languishing like Lucifer in Hell came to earth to help mankind teaching tongues, healing, laws and hygiene – everything – and forming the basis for the establishment of universities. Davies’s story alternates between Maria Magdalena Theototy, an early 20’s graduate student, giving voice to the story from her perspective and an unmarried but contented Anglican priest ‘Fatty’ (big boned) Father Simon Darcourt who spends most of the book longingly in love with the young, beautiful and brilliant Maria who happened to be in one of his classes at the University and a student of his close friend Clement Hollier. Davies had Father Simon Darcourt sourcing chapters called “The New Audrey” a title based on a book which was sort of a Plutarch’s Lives for modern times and less prestigious folk that Simon was working on, with Maria’s perspective on events alternating with chapters called Second Paradise. I was not initially impressed by the book, and although it was throughout readily readable I felt restless and almost impatient for some action. But i enjoyed it nonetheless. It dawned on me that the real hero of the story, the real rebel angel, was John Parlabane, a defrocked SSM, homosexual with hints of bi-sexuality, debarred academic, convicted felon, a once-and-perhaps-current drug addict, and one whom Davies portrayed as the personification of evil itself and which we readers could readily believe. However under Robertson Davies, at least for me, it was Johnny Parlabane’s character that defines the story. I had not taken Davies’ pretty explicit hint – the first line in the book the book starts with “Parlabane is back’ – perhaps getting sidetracked as I suspect Davies knew his readers might by the beautiful graduate student pursuing his doctorate in Medieval studies under Professor Hollier who some months before had bedded her and with whom she was in love. We learn much later that she – brilliant, intellectual, independent, of Romany stock, beautiful (intellectually, morally, and incidentally, physically) – ultimately marries a financier in her bare feet: perhaps Davies believed that even woman of this calibre could be this easily bought. And although Davies had Parlabane have only a bit part to play here and there, as a reader one always felt his presence, and as Maria Magdalena Theototy admitted he was the kind of man that was so stimulating that he could lead her to an intellectual orgasm, a person easy to succumb to. The Rebel Angel is a wonderful story. There is one point where Parlabane is seeking to publish a book he has written and he describes it glowingly to Darcourt saying that it has the four core elements of the works of Dante, himself a Medieval author: namely that a story might be taken literally, allegorically, morally and anagogical, that is interpreting a story from the spiritual perspective. I suspected that Robertson Davies was talking about his own book here, that The Rebel Angel could be read from any of these viewpoints, but he included a fifth too, humorously. I suspect Hollier (and Maria) may have been based on a real life Medievalist, Leslie J. Workman, who was teaching at Columbia and founded the International Society for the study of Medievalism. He was a contemporary of Davies. There was a wonderful tribute paid to him by Kathleen Verduin (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.uni.edu/universitas/archive/spring06/kathleenverduin.htm" rel="nofollow noopener">http://www.uni.edu/universitas/archiv...</a>) who had been both his student and then later his wife until he died in 2001. She described him as a ‘brilliant, witty, eccentric, stubborn, compassionate, and totally individualistic man whom the world knew as Leslie J. Workman’. There seemed an element of deep respect for Hollier in Davies' The Rebel Angel and for all academics, in spite of their human frailties that Robertson Davies makes such fun of for our reading pleasure. This is the first Robertson Davies book I have read and apparently it is not necessarily his best. So I look forward to reading more of his work. He seems quintessentially Canadian: this is almost a book that should not be read by anyone under 18, and who through psychological tests have proved he or she is mature enough to handle the cauldron of ideas and the sheer imaginativeness of Davies’ writing, and can withstand having the most sublime concepts and dogma we hold so dear, shredded, make the butt of comedy and ridicule. Davies does all this while seemingly to maintain an honest and sincere reverence for them and us. Quintessentially Canadian, or as in the White Collar series when replying to Neal Caffrey’s question “Were the Canadians Angry?’ FBI agent, Peter Burke answered “As angry as they could be’ by which he meant not very much at all nor for long. This is also why we elected Justin Trudeau: this was before Parlabane’s time and Davies’s, but I think they would have understood and applauded. Edwin

Two professors--one a goodhearted priest, the other a dabbler in the darker arts--becomes involved with graduate student Maria Theotoki, who knows the gospel of the angels who betrayed heaven's secrets

Maggie Gordon

I know I read this and have memories of enjoying it. Can't remember a thing about it though! Whoops...

The Rebel Angels

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