Return of the Sphinx

by Hugh MacLennan

Revolutionary violence in Quebec--and indeed in many other parts of the world as well--has demonstrated in a terrifying way the prophetic quality of Return of the Sphinx. The title refers to the Oedipus legend of the sphinx which made cities sick, tore families assunder, and set sons against fathers and daughters against mothers--a description that seems only too apt for our society today.

Set in Montreal and Ottawa, Return of the Sphinx illuminates the conflict between Alan Ainslie, idealist, patriot, intellectuel, and his son Daniel, a young revolutionary Quebec separatist. It is combined with the tender love affair between young Chantal Ainslie and Gabriel Fleury, friend and contemporary of her father.

Hugh MacLennan has chosen great themes--revolution, the conflict of generations, the love of father for son, of man for woman--and has handled them magnificently.


McGill-Queen's University Press is pleased to announce the reprinting of five classic works by Hugh MacLennan - Each Man's Son, Return of the Sphinx, Two Solitudes, The Watch That Ends the Night, and Voices in Time - in a trade paper format and student mass-market edition. Alan Ainslie is an able and dedicated man high in the government. Daniel Ainslie, his son, is a member of an explosive movement impelled by the naive rebelliousness of the New left. Hugh MacLennan weaves a complex and succinct story of two generations in conflict.

303 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

John Hugh MacLennan was born to Dr.Samuel MacLennan, a physician, and Katherine MacQuarrie in Glace Bay; he had an older sister named Frances. His father was a stern Calvinist; his mother, creative, warm and dreamy. Hugh inherited traits from both. In 1913 they went to London where Samuel took courses for a medical specialty. When they returned to Canada, they settled briefly in Sydney, before moving permanently to Halifax where they experienced the Explosion in Dec. 1917, which Hugh later wrote about in his first published novel, Barometer Rising. He became good at sports, winning the men's N.S. double tennis championship in 1927. Both Frances and Hugh were pushed hard in their schooling by their father, especially in the Classics. Frances had no interest in these subjects, but Hugh did well in them, first at Dalhousie University, winning a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. He worked incredibly hard there but only reached second-class. In his 4th year, he spent more and more time on tennis and writing poetry, which was not accepted by the publishers to whom he sent it.
While in Europe he traveled to Italy, Greece, Switzerland, France and Germany. While sailing home in 1932, he met his future wife, Dorothy Duncan. His father was not pleased with her American background and insisted that he not marry before becoming independent. Since he was refused a job at two Canadian universities and had a scholarship for Princeton University, he completed his Ph.D.Oxyrhynchus:An Economic and Social Study, about the decline of a Roman colony in Egypt.
He wrote two novels during those years, one set in Europe, the other in the USA. but they were never published. It was his wife, whom he married in 1936, who persuaded him to set his work in Canada, the country he knew best. He had begun teaching at Lower Canada College in Montreal. She told him, "Nobody's going to understand Canada until she evolves a literature of her own, and you're the fellow to start bringing Canadian novels up to date." Until then there had been no real tradition of Canadian literature, and MacLennan set out to define Canada for Canadians through a national novel.Barometer Rising, his novel about the social class structure of Nova Scotia and the Halifax Explosion of 1917, was published in 1941.

Reviews

[Vionna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully descriptive book written by a premier Canadian author. You had to read the book slowly to grasp all the images and the times of the early 1960s in Quebec where revolutionary thoughts were encompassing the minds of the younger generation. The characters flawlessly portrayed and Canadian events were in the forefront.

[Sara McC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy his writing very much. Rich, historical, Canadian.