The ‘Impish Drolleries’ of Exotic Knowledge: Trilogies, Triads, and Troilism in Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies completed three trilogies and was probably working on a fourth at the time of his death. His focus on the number three in a variety of forms and under a number of guises — trilogies, troilism (three-in-a-bed), and triadism (saintly criminality)—represents a recurrent trope in the fiction that is linked to his personal quest for Jungian/alchemical self-realization and human completeness. Whereas this creates a rich, often vital, and highly entertaining series of inter-linked fictions, the arcane and exotic knowledge upon which the presentation relies reveals the limitations of Davies’s preoccupations.