데니스 리의 ｢시민의 애가｣를 통해 본 토론토와 캐나다: 애도에서 희망으로

초록

In line with the geographically diverse spectrum of English poetry, this study introduces the 1972 winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry, and examines Dennis Lee’s critical view of Toronto and Canada. While explaining “Civil Elegies” in detail, this paper traces how the poet’s public angles on the city and the nation change from a lament to a regenerative possibility. The nine sections of the title poem of Civil Elegies and Other Poems demonstrate a profound concern for the environmental crisis, culturally and politically colonized perceptions and consumer capitalism in Canada. By following the speaker-poet’s perspective from the beginning to the end of this long poem, we will encounter the poet’s diverse tones such as critique, protest, frustration, negation, inquiry, and hope for the future. Although Lee does not seem to provide plausible progressive or historical details for any redemptive possibility out of the dismay, his work is considered the most “earnest” or “exemplary” of his era. In a similar vein, “Civil Elegies” can be viewed as a “civic and public” discourse, and Lee was appointed as the first Poet Laureate of Toronto in 2001. As Lee’s work, which engages with Toronto and its citizens, invokes the Earth, it is expected that reading Lee’s poetry will contribute to diversifying English poetry courses beyond the standard British and American poetry within the curricula of English departments in Korea.

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