MACMILLAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE General Editor: A. NoRMAN jeffares

Transcription

1 MACMILLAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE General Editor: A. NoRMAN jeffares

2 MACMILLAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE General Editor: A. Norman J effares Published OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE Michael Alexander ENGLISH GOTHIC LITERATURE Derek Brewer SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Murray Roston SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Bruce King EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Maximillian Novak NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE Margaret Stonyk TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE (Second Edition) Harry Blamires ANGLO-IRISH LITERATURE A. NormanJeffares THE LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES (Second Edition) Marshall Walker THE LITERATURE OF SCOTLAND Roderick Watson A HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE Ken Goodwin A HISTORY OF CANADIAN LITERATURE William H. New Forthcoming A HISTORY OF LITERATURE IN THE IRISH LANGUAGE Declan Kiberd A HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM A. H. Ashe

3 MACMILLAN HISTORY OF LITERATURE AHISTORYOF CANADIAN LITERATURE W. H. New M MACMILLAN EDUCATION

4 W. H. New 1989 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WCIE 7AE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1989 Published by MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data New, W.H. A history of Canadian literature. ( Macmillan history of literature). I. Canadian literature-history and criticism I. Title 810.9'971 PR ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI /

5 Contents List of plates List of tables Acknowledgments Editor's preface Vll Vll Vlll Xl 1. Mythmakers: early literature Introduction; Indian cultures; Indian texts; Indian mythology; Inuit culture; Inuit mythology; European myth and cultural context 2. Reporters: literature to Backgrounds; Journalism and cultural politics; Exploration journals; Missionary journals; Travel, captivity and settlement journals; Letters and epistolary form; Satire and speech; Politics and poetry; Romantic documentary; Documentary romance 3. Tale-tellers: literature to Anglo-Protestant, ultramontane, prairie; Currents of ideas; Historical tales; Sentimentality, satire and social reform; Social and literary resistance; Nature stories; Confederation Poets; The Nelligan symbol; Sketches of reality 4. Narrators: literature to 1959 National romance and the land; Painters and the Montreal Group; Social protest and social change; Realism; The politics of literary form; Literature and war; Voice and point of view; Radio and stage; Public and personal poetry; National presumptions; Sources of change 137

6 VI 5. Encoders: literature to 1985 Language, literature, the state and the academies; Codes of myth; Codes of history; Codes of figure and person; Codes of gender; Codes of fantasy and folklore; Parodic codes; Epilogue Chronological table Further reading Index

7 List of plates Cover: Elegy for an Island, by Jack Shad bolt l. Talelaya (the sea-woman), Inuit print by Kenojuak 2. My Dream by Carl Ray 3-6. Canadian continental expansion, 1825, 1867, 1895, 'The Emigrant's Welcome to Canada', c.l Vancouver, Hommage a Nelligan, by Jean-Paul Lemieux 10. The jack Pine, by Tom Thomson 11. Big Raven, by Emily Carr 12. Young Canadian, by Charles Comfort 13. Reason over Passion, by Joyce Wieland 14. To Prince Edward Island, by Alex Colville 15. 'Susanna Moodie', by Isaac Bickerstaff (Don Evans) 16. 'Margaret Atwood', by Isaac Bickerstaff (Don Evans) List of tables l. Indian language groups 2. Population growth 3. Ethnicorigins,

8 Acknowledgments I should like to thank several colleagues who read parts of this book and offered helpful advice: Alan Lawson of the University of Queensland, and Diana Brydon, Eva-Marie Kremer, and Laurie Ricou of the University of British Columbia. Many others willingly answered particular questions. Jon Nightingale and Victoria Lyon Lamb provided guidance with computer programming; Lilita Rodman located some statistical data; Robin Bellamy helped find some of the illustrations, and along with Diane Thomson and numerous other people, helped verify authors' dates; Richard Ruggles, Michael Ames and Conrad Heidenreich answered questions about ethnographic and cartographic history. Doreen Todhunter, Debbi Onbirbak and Beverly Westbrook typed sections of the manuscript. To all of them, and to A. N. Jeffares and Beverley Tarquini, for their editorial suggestions, I am grateful. My greatest debt is to Peggy, my wife, and our two sons, David and Peter. As always, they generously encouraged me. I want especially to thank Peggy for her constructive comments on the typescript, and for the twenty years of conversation that helped in no small way to shape this book. The author and publisher also wish to express their appreciation to the following, for permission to quote from material in copyright: David Amason, excerpt from The Circus Performers' Bar: Talonbooks; Margaret Atwood, excerpts from poems: the author; Margaret Avison, excerpts from poems from The Dumbfounding: the author; Earle Birney, excerpts from poems: the author; George Bowering, excerpt from Burning Water: the author; Morley Callaghan, excerpt from 'A Girl with Ambition': Don Congdon Associates Inc.; Emily Carr, from FRESH SEEING by Emily Carr 1972 Clarke Irwin & Co. Ltd: used by permission oflrwin Publishing Inc.; Rienzi Crusz, excerpt from poem: Porcupine's Quill; Raymond Filip, excerpt from

9 poem: reprinted with permission from Somebody Told Me I Look Like Everyman, by Raymond Filip; Arsenal Pulp Press, 1150 Homer St, Vancouver, Canada, V6B 2X6; Mavis Gallant, excerpts from stories: Macmillan of Canada; John Glassco, excerpt from Memoirs of Montparnasse: Oxford University Press, Canada, 1970; Barbara Thompson Godard, excerpt from introduction to Nicole Brossard's These Our Mothers: the author; Ralph Gustafson, excerpt from 'Partial Argument' (Corners in the Glass, published by McClelland & Stewart): the author; A. M. Klein, excerpts from poems: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd; Robert Kroetsch, excerpt from Seed Catalogue: the author; Margaret Laurence, excerpt from 'The Sound of the Singing' (A Bird in the House): reprinted by permission of The Canadian Publishers, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto; Irving Layton, excerpts from Darkening Fire by Irving Layton: used by permission of The Canadian Publishers, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, and the author; Dennis Lee, excerpt from Civil Elegies: the author; Dorothy Livesay, excerpts from Collected Poems: The Two Seasons: the author; Jay Macpherson, excerpts from Welcoming Disaster: the author; Eli Mandel, excerpt from 'The Double' (Out of Place, 1977): Press Porcepic; Gaston Miron, excerpts from Embers and Earth: Les Editions Guernica Editions; John New love, excerpts from poems: the author; bp Nichol, 'Blues' (typography by Vivien Halas): the author; Michael Ondaatje, excerpt from 'White Dwarfs' (There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do, McClelland & Stewart, Michael Ondaatje): the author; P. K. Page, excerpts from 'Photos of a Salt Mine' and 'Cook's Mountains': the author; AI Purdy, excerpts from Cariboo Horses by AI Purdy: used by permission of The Canadian Publishers, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, and the author; Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst, excerpt from Raven Steals the Light: Douglas & Mcintyre; C. G. D. Roberts, excerpts from 'The Prisoners of the Pitcher Plant', Kindred of the Wild, and Poems: used by permission of The Canadian Publishers, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto; Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau, excerpts from 'Le Jeu', 'Accompagnement', 'Cage d'or' (Poesies Completes): Editions Fides; D. C. Scott, excerpts from Selected Poems: used by permission ofthe Canadian Publishers, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto; F. R. Scott, excerpts from Collected Poems by F. R. Scott: used by permission ofthe Canadian Publishers, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto; Lola Lemire Tostevin, excerpts from Color of Her Speech: the author; Sheila Watson, excerpt from The Double Hook by Sheila Watson: used by permission of The Canadian Publishers, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto; Phyllis IX

10 X Webb, excerpts from poems: the author; Ethel Wilson, excerpts from Swamp Angel and The Innocent Traveller: the University of British Columbia Library.

11 Editor's preface The study of literature requires knowledge of contexts as well as of texts. What kind of person wrote the poem, the play, the novel, the essay? What forces acted upon them as they wrote? What was the historical, the political, the philosophical, the economic, the cultural background? Was the writer accepting or rejecting the literary conventions of the time, or developing them, or creating entirely new kinds ofliterary expression? Are there interactions between literature and the art, music or architecture of its period? Was the writer affected by contemporaries or isolated? Such questions stress the need for students to go beyond the reading of set texts, to extend their knowledge by developing a sense of chronology, of action and reaction, and of the varying relationships between writers and society. Histories of literature can encourage students to make comparisons, can aid in understanding the purposes of individual authors and in assessing the totality of their achievements. Their development can be better understood and appreciated with some knowledge of the background of their time. And histories ofliterature, apart from their valuable function as reference books, can demonstrate the great wealth of writing in English that there is to be enjoyed. They can guide the reader who wishes to explore it more fully and to gain in the process deeper insights into the rich diversity not only ofliterature but of human life itself. A. NORMAN jeffares

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