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214 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 scales decisively. The result was, by century's end, the form of 'English' which we know today, with an almost exclusive focus on text reading and interpretation, with writing instruction occurring en passant in the production of interpretive essays, and oratorical instruction dropped altogether. Hubert argues that English departments should reconsider the lost disciplinary heritage of 'the vernacular curriculum of leading Anglophone colleges at the time of Confederation, a curriculum that offered a balance betwen poetics and rhetoric, between reading and writing, and between speech and composition.' Certainly his own history makes a strong case for restoring the complex of purposes and activities which characterized rhetorical study earlier in this country's history. (HEATHER MURRAY) D.M.R. Bentley. Mimic Fires: Accounts of Early Long Poems on Canada McGill-Queen's University Press. xii, 354. $49.95 cloth This study both distils and extends work undertaken by D.M.R. Bentley as editor of the Canadian Poetry Press. Bracketed by a 'General History' and 'Envoi,' eighteen admirably concise essays treat a selection of chiefly - long poems about the physical and social landscapes of early Canada. In this structure, somewhat akin to the one adopted by Desmond Pacey in Ten Canadian Poets (1958), Bentley argues persuasively for a continuity of vision among poems as apparently disparate as Kelsey's 'Now Reader Read ...' and Crawford's Malcolm's Katie. That vision, breathtaking in contrast to the limited horizons of most contemporary Canadian writers, was energized by a cohering or centripetal impulse; m~ny of the poems brought under discussion are shown to be occasions for the contest between that impulse, on the one hand, and the threat of conflict or dissolution, on the other. Imbricated on, not separated from, that contest in these poems was the evolving history of a geopolitical confederation, the very gradual building of societies into, not a nation, a kingdom (a popular choice in 1867), or only a federation, but a dominion - a self-governing territorial possession of Britain. The act of literary criticism is for Bentley a formative act of making culture. Thus he argues, in a valorization of the historical which still finds more adherents in other disciplines than in literary criticism, that'early Canadian poetry has much to tell us, not merely about the past, but also about the present and the future - about where we came from, how we got here, and where we might be going.' This perspective stands at healthy odds against the post-colonial surge in the discipline, which, if it does not dismiss early literature, reads it for its patent colonial contradictions - as if our own perplexed struggles between centrifugal and centripetal urges in Canadian society have somehow transcended those of the HUMANITIES 215 past. Far from suggesting that a continuity of vision is straightforward or unproblematicaI, however, Bentley demonstrates how the societies found in these poems reflected wrenching changes in British colonial and economic policy during the nineteenth century, changes which rather thrust than encouraged the colonies of British North America towards a measure of autonomy. That demonstration occurs through a choice of poems that sets the cohering visions of, for example, Cary, Bayley, Longmore, and Lampman against the various dissenting views of Mackay (a harsh climate precludes civilization), Kidd (natural order is preferable to civilized), O'Grady (the emigrant is imperilled by the wilderness and by political discontent), and, in terms of perceived threats to social stability, even McLachlan and Crawford. By no means does the theme of peace, order, and good government ring unchallenged through these poems, or this study of them. Meanwhile, the body of poetry normally considered is extended by insightful discussions of Kelsey's verses, John Strachan's 'Verses ... 1802,' and Thomas Moore's poems relating to Canada. As to the continuity of a physical and social vision, Bentley demonstrates that consultation of many of the same sources from travel literature and natural history formed a paramount and enduring influence on these poets' works. Such titles as Colden's History of the Five Indian Nations (1747), Bartram's Observations (1751), Charlevoix's Journal (1761), Kalm's Travels (1770-1), Carver's Travels (1778), Crevecreur's Letters (1782), Anburey's...

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