1982-03-25. MUN Gazette, vol. 14, no. 13

              ISSN 0228-8877
*,
Memorial's Open House and
Health Fair are both scheduled for
Saturday March 27 this year.
"Is tenure essential to academic
freedom?" was the question asked
during the recent conference on
academic freedom sponsored by the
Departments of History, Philosophy
and Sociology at MUN. Third article
in a series.
The Spring 1982 edition of LUMINUS, the publication of the Memorial
University of Newfoundland Alumni
Association will be published with the
April 1-5 issue of the MUN Gazette. It
will feature a special report on the
1981 Alumni Annual Fund campaign
as well as other items of interest to
former Memorial students.
Recent scholarship and merit awards
to Memorial students hre included in
this GAZETTE.
4,5
CORRECTION: Memorial's Geology and Geophysics departments
have merged to form a new department titled Earth Sciences. In this
column, (March 11 GAZETTE), it
was incorrectly stated that "Geography and Geophysics • ■ • merged
to form a new department."
VOL. 14, NO. 13
Memorial University of Newfoundland
March 25, 1982
E.J. Pratt Lecture
to be held April 2
Dr. David G. Pitt
The E.J. Pratt
Memorial Lecture
for the academic
year 1981-82 has
been scheduled for
the current semester, since February
1982 is the centenary of E.J. Pratt's
birth. The lecture
will be given on
Friday, April 2nd,
at 8 p.m. in the
Engineering Lecture Theatre (X-
207).
This year's speaker will be Professor
David G. Pitt, Head of the Department of
English at Memorial. Dr. Pitt, who was born
in Musgravetown in 1921 and educated at
Memorial University College, Mount
Allison University and the University of
Toronto, is one of Canada's foremost Pratt
scholars. He has published an edited
selection of Pratt's poems, Here the Tides
Flow and a collection of critical essays On
E.J. Pratt, and is at present writing a full-
scale biography of Pratt.
Dr. Pitt's lecture will be on Pratt and is
entitled "Towards the First Spike: the
Evolution of a Poet."
Dr Pitt first met Ned Pratt in the late
1940s when he began graduate studies at the
University of Toronto where Pratt was
Professor of Modern Poetry and Drama at
Victoria College. His fascination with Pratt
both as a poet and a man has been strong
ever since.
Dr. Pitt seems suited to his task since
both men share backgrounds which were
very similar. Pitt, like Pratt, is the son of an
English Methodist clergyman who married a
Newfoundlander, and then led, as with most
Methodist clergy of the day, a semi-nomadic
life throughout Newfoundland. The two
lived in some of the same outports and, says
Dr. Pitt, it was the discovery that both had
taught at Moreton's Harbour and had many
friends there which cemented their
friendship.
For some time he had thought of
writing a biography of Pratt for although
there is an abundance of material on Pratt,
the poet, no definitive work had been written
on his life and work. The short biographical
sketches which did appear, (most of them
during the 1940s) were usually "inaccurate,
inconclusive and necessarily incomplete."
Dr. Pitt points out that their inaccuracy was
in no small part due to Pratt himself. He
loved to embellish the truth about himself,
thereby   leading   many   an   unsuspecting
journalist astray.
Dr. Pitt could not begin his work in
earnest while Pratt was alive, as the poet was
insistent that such a study be done only after
he was "dead and gone".
"Then, if people are still reading my
stuff (as he consistently referred to his
poetry) perhaps someone can write a thin
volume to set the record straight."
The book should be a definitive,
comprehensive study of Pratt, incorporating
both critical analysis of Pratt the Poet and
an account of Pratt the man. Says Dr. Pitt,
"I have tried to discover and interpret the
inner man and to account for elements in his
poetry that come out of his Newfoundland
outport background. In the work one will
find Pratt the poet who, after a long period
of searching in the fields of psychology and
theology, finally found his uniquervoice and
went on to become, in the minds of many,
Canada's greatest poet."
A few copies of the more recent E.J.
Pratt lectures are available for viewing in the
Queen Elizabeth II library.
Visiting Librarian
Two librarians make common cause. Mrs.
Maureen Foulds, a reference librarian at the
national Library of New Zealand and Joy
Tillotson, Information Services Librarian,
Memorial's Queen Elizabeth II Library,
visited   that   institution's   government
documents in their tour of the building. Mrs.
Foulds visited the MUN campus when her
husband, Dr. Les Foulds, recently gave four
lectures on Operations Research. See page 3
for story on Foulds' lectures.