The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies
Published 1981 · 470 pages · 105,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Fiction, Literary Fiction, Campus Novel
How hard is The Rebel Angels to read?
The Rebel Angels scores 43 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 60 out of 100
- Draws on Rabelais, Paracelsian medicine, alchemy, Gypsy Romani culture, academic jargon, and theological terminology. Davies's most erudite novel in terms of sheer range of reference.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Two distinct narrative voices — Maria's passionate and youthful, Darcourt's measured and wry — both accessible despite the learned content. Dialogue-heavy sections read easily.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Philosophical discussions about the nature of knowledge are grounded in vivid campus life. The abstractions are debated by characters rather than imposed by the narrator.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Extraordinarily packed with arcane learning — Rabelaisian scholarship, alchemical symbolism, Gypsy customs, art history, coprology — all integrated into the plot.
- Narrative indirection: 35 out of 100
- The dual narration provides two perspectives on the same events but the story unfolds straightforwardly. Less structurally complex than the Deptford Trilogy.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The rebel angels, the Cornish collection, the violin made from human remains, Parlabane's manuscript — all function as symbols for the dangerous power of forbidden knowledge.
- Ironic distance: 45 out of 100
- Davies views academia with affectionate satire. Both narrators are insiders who see the absurdities of university life without rejecting the scholarly enterprise.
- Resolution withholding: 30 out of 100
- The novel resolves its main plots — the estate, Maria's love life, Parlabane's fate — while leaving threads for the subsequent Cornish Trilogy volumes.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Alternating first-person chapters between two narrators. Clean and effective, less layered than the Deptford Trilogy's perspectival games.
How The Rebel Angels is regarded
The Rebel Angels holds a literary regard score of 60 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.