Víctimas de trata y colaboración con la justicia.

Before getting into McLuhan’s PhD thesis years and his study of Thomas Nashe we need, firstly, to briefly digress and examine McLuhan’s earlier studies of two figures commonly regarded as high-profile and

controversial, professional conversationalists: George Meredith and Gilbert K. Chesterton.

Born in Winnipeg (1911), McLuhan began his tertiary education in Canada as a student of Engineering at the University of Manitoba. In an unpublished autobiographical note McLuhan states that his interest in Engineering stemmed from his interest in structure and design.5 _After

3 _{James I. Costigan, “Communication Theory in the Works of Marshall McLuhan,” (PhD} diss., Southern Illinois University, 1970), 162.

4 _{McLuhan to Allen Maruyama, 27 August 1973.}

one year, however, he read himself out of Engineering and into English, where he went on to earn his first B.A. and M.A. degrees. For his

Master’s dissertation McLuhan conducted a study of George Meredith. Although it would be reasonable to expect that in later life McLuhan came to see Meredith, as James Joyce had, as an obtuse sentimentalist with a split mind, his dissertation, “George Meredith as Poet and

Dramatic Novelist,” presents him as a “towering” and “complex genius” who bridged the gap between the 18th and 20th centuries.6 _{In “George}

Meredith” McLuhan praises Meredith’s vivid use of metaphor, his economy, compression, use of proportionality, ability to combine both prose and verse, and how his synthetic mind exhibits both “poetical inspiration and intellectual power” developed in equal degree.7

Meredith, McLuhan argues, is not a philosophic spectator interested in disembodied thought, but rather he has a poet’s concern with human passions, motives, and an “attitude toward Earth and nature rather than a hypothesis amenable to logical demonstration.”8 _{Further, McLuhan}

states that it is “impossible to call him [Meredith] a radical or a

conservative given his poet’s sensibility and consequent sympathy with both positions.”9

Following the award of his Master’s degree from Manitoba, McLuhan was awarded a scholarship to Cambridge University. Rather than immediately embarking on further post-graduate studies he set about acquiring an additional Bachelors and Masters degree in English. This, however, is terrain that is more than adequately covered by both

6 _{McLuhan, “George Meredith as Poet and Dramatic Novelist,“ (MA diss., University of} Manitoba, 1934).

7 _{Ibid., 36, 14.} 8 _{Ibid., 40.} 9 _{Ibid., 37–38.}

Gordon and Marchand in their respective biographies. For our purposes what is of interest is that during his undergraduate years at Cambridge McLuhan was working on the first of three essays he would write on Gilbert K. Chesterton.10 _{It is necessary to look at McLuhan’s essay, “G. K.}

Chesterton: A Practical Mystic,” albeit briefly, as it gives us an insight into the workings of McLuhan’s mind, his temperament, and when paired with his earlier work on Meredith, it goes a long way to setting the stage for our exploration of McLuhan’s PhD thesis years.

In his first essay on Chesterton McLuhan contrasts Chesterton, as a “practical mystic,” with the “mystagogue.” Chesterton, McLuhan argues, does not hide mysteries but reveals them.11 _{McLuhan then}

proceeds to explore Chesterton’s use and mastery of paradox.12 _{He claims}

that when it is clear that there are two sides to everything, practical and mystical, “then the meaning and effect of Chesterton can become clear.”13

For Chesterton, McLuhan asserts, existence has a value more than optimism or pessimism, which leads him to consciously cause “a clash between appearances to sow the truth transcending the conflict.”14 _{It is}

here that we see that, in many respects, McLuhan’s study of Chesterton has the “pagan” George Meredith as its other “surface.”15 _While

10 _{McLuhan began reading Chesterton in 1932, before taking on Meredith for his} Master’s dissertation. The significance of Chesterton for McLuhan’s oeuvre has already been well established. For the most accurate appraisal see Donald Theall, The Virtual Marshall McLuhan (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), 207, 97.

11 _{McLuhan, “G. K. Chesterton: A Practical Mystic,” Dalhousie Review 15, no. 4 (1936):} 457.

12 _{McLuhan finds Chesterton is able to maintain his “position” insofar as he has double} vision, having “fixed his attention on the present and past because he is concerned for our future,” (Ibid., 462).

13 _{Ibid., 455.} 14 _{Ibid., 460.}

15 _{In “George Meredith,” McLuhan documents Meredith’s rise, from the “low estate of a} pantheist” to “the high estate of a pagan.” A “pagan,” McLuhan notes, was a person who

“opposed” on matters of religion, both Chesterton and Meredith, as McLuhan presents them, are similarly engaged in the task of causing a clash between appearances to sow the truth transcending the conflict. In the case of Meredith, McLuhan argues, this can be seen in his use and understanding of high comedy and the comic spirit: “…if you believe our civilization is founded in common sense (and that is the first condition of sanity to believe it) you will, when contemplating men, discern a spirit overhead.”16 _{Meredith’s comic characters, McLuhan argues, appear as}

puppets, which he uses as a “sword of common sense” and “instrument of social improvement.” It (comedy) is not, however, a sword used out of spite. Since comedy knows men so intimately, it is not contemptuous of human folly.17 _{Rather, Meredith’s use of comedy, McLuhan claims, is a}

means for consummating a synthesis of existing dualities. The battle of opposites exposes the one object — life itself.18