Davies in Popular Culture
- Davies is one of the authors mentioned in the Moxy Früvous song "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors". The line "Who needs a shave? He's Robertson Davies" makes reference to his long white beard.
- In The Sacred Art of Stealing, Christopher Brookmyre (an admirer of Davies) has a character refer to a painting of "The Marriage at Cana", saying that some experts consider it to be a fake. This is a reference to a decidedly fake (although excellent) picture painted by Francis Cornish, the protagonist in What's Bred in the Bone. Many of the characters in Brookmyre's novels are named after characters in Davies's books.
- John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany contains several references to Davies' novels, including strong echoes of Fifth Business; for example, the narrators of both novels work as teachers in Toronto in private schools (Bishop Strachan School in Meany and a fictionalisation of Upper Canada College in Davies's novels).
- Indie-rock band Tokyo Police Club references the gravel pit scene from Fifth Business in their song Your English Is Good.
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Famous quotes containing the words davies, popular and/or culture:
“And as the sun above the light doth bring,
Though we behold it in the air below,
So from th’ eternal Light the soul doth spring,
Though in the body she her powers do show.”
—Sir John Davies (1569–1626)
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If you’re anxious for to shine in the high esthetic line as a man
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You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant
them everywhere.
You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your
complicated state of mind,
The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a
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—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)