Making It Real: The Canonization of English-Canadian Literature by Robert Lecker (review)

HUMANITIES 147 One of the more curious aspects of the 'pc f debate, in both Canada and the United States, is the degree to which it first focused on English and the literature curriculum: why not history, for example, or sociology? Not only a professor of English, but an expert in the area of Renaissance studies (with a strong background in classics), Keefer is well positioned to analyse the ways in which conservative educational critics (both neo and old line) have defended the'classics' and their role in transmitting received wisdom (or 'culturef) and traditional valties. Keefer is at his best - in the section called 'Canonical Subversions/ for example - where he can combine political with literary analysis: some witty readings of high-canonical classics (Plato, Shakespeare, and the Romantics) show how these works vibrate with the ethical and existential uncertainties which so alarm the canoneers, and are often infused with the political passions they find equally disturbing . (Beware the quicksand tmder these cultural 'foundations.') For Keefer, however, such selective or censoring use of the 'classics' is not confined to conservative social thinkers alone: this'subtractive politicizing' (again, Keefer's term) can be found within the academyin, for example, the kinds of decontextualized Renaissance studies which new historicists wish to overturn. However, Keefer's concern is broader than theoretical or canonical disputes, and his threnodic conclusion returns to the urgencies of the current moment, in which access to higher education is narrowing as curricular offerings are beginning to broaden, and in which technocratic educational policies are put :in place as the need for cultural conversation :intensifies . This overarching irony leads to a further irony of reader response: to wish for a prolongation of the I culture wars' in which, for better or worse, the humanities crucially, publicly, matter. (HEATHER MURRAY) Robert Lecker. Making It Real: The Canonization ofEnglish-Canadian Literature Anansi 1995. xi, 276. $22·95 Robert Lecker's tiUe is a reference to Robert Kroetsch's claim that 'our fictions make us real/ but it could as well be a reference to Lucien Bouchard's famous claim that Canada is not 'a real country.' Lecker's essays are a call to specialists in Canadian literature to think more about our role.. and that of the canon of works we teach and study.. in shaping an idea of Canada as a 'real' country. Lecker discusses many aspects of what constitutes the Canadian canon, including whether it exists at all. His arguments are complexf sometimes contradictory, hard to follow, and, especially in his discussion of the public role of scholars, meandering. The issues he raises are, however, the central problems facing university English departments now. After many years of examination of the politics of the literary canon and the values embedded 148 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 therein, many departments and scholars are still facing changes and cuts with no dear defence of what they do. Lecker assumes that the position of Canadian literature in the larger literary canon is now secure. It seems to me, however, that the 9.2 per cent of Canadian university literature course offerings he claims were devoted to Canadian literature in 1992 are a paltry basis from which to develop a sense of a national cultural identity. These courses, like those in postcolonial , cultural, and feminist studies, are too often merely tack-ons, not fully integrated into curricula, to counteract the message that books by foreigners are more worthy of study than books by Canadians. The situation necessarily makes the study of Canadian literature a political act and I found myself resisting Lecker's accusation, in the book's longest chapter, that our work is 'feudaC private, and territorial,' 'not concerned with Canadian values, or Canadian issues, or even Canadian literature.' In a book which castigates the work of academics for being too 'private,' the intentional fallacy recurs. I do not believe Lecker when he insists that Canadian critics do not intend to reach a public audience; through what media, other than his own publishing company, does he suggest that audience be reached? His story of expulsion from the garden of public readership through, first, the introduction of Canadian courses in universities and then the eating of...