Literary Precedents for Under the Volcano

Under the Volcano Literary Precedents

The "Lowry industry" has stimulated what the late R. P. Blackmur, speaking of Ulysses (1922), called "the whole clutter of exegesis, adulation, and diatribe." A Times Literary Supplement critic calls Under the Volcano "a masterpiece as rich and humorous as Ulysses and far more poetic." John Wain writes that "the writer with whom Lowry has most in common is James Joyce," adding: "To me, Ulysses is a great book that almost didn't come off. Under the Volcano is a great book that almost did." A University of Toronto thesis by Anthony Kilgallin finds echoes in Lowry's novel of Christ, Adam, Don Quixote, Dante, Faust, Oedipus, Lord Jim, Svidrigailov, Chichikov, Moby Dick, and of authors too numerous to list. In an ingenious attempt to demonstrate that Under the Volcano is a truly Joycean work, one of Lowry's friends, the novelist David Markson, finds a complete Homeric parallel incorporated into Chapter X....
(read more)