Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Gillian Harding-Russell

Critical Essay by Gillian Harding-Russell

SOURCE: “A Note on Ondaatje's ‘Peter’: A Creative Myth,” in Canadian Literature, No. 112, Spring, 1987, pp. 205-11.

In the essay below, Harding-Russell discusses Ondaajte's handling of both myth and the artist figure in the early poem “Peter.” The critic asserts that, with “Peter,” Ondaajte “deftly objectifies the artist's dilemma by representing him as ‘court monster’ in a fairy tale setting.”

In “Peter” of The Dainty Monsters, Ondaatje explores the artist's ability or inability to rise above personality and experience.¹ He creates a myth around a vindictive artist figure which recalls other implied analogues or figures for the artist in various of the “dainty monsters” that appear in this volume: the mad heron of “Birds for Janet” and “In Another Fashion,” the monstrously deformed Philoctetes of “The Goodnight,” the decadent Paris whose belly is an “undigested beast” or Prometheus who is “scientifically” “splayed” on a rock but fights back with...
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