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Canada if Necessary... E.D. BLODGETT Canada is,and always has been, the most modern of the new world societies. RROKER 83 TEACHINGtheCanadianliteratureshasoftenposeda particular, if not always expressed, problem for me. The problem relates to the fact that students do not always, with the exception of nationalists, find Canadian as 'interesting' as American literature. Where are, it is often asked, our heroic adventures or sense of myth? Why no 'six-gun mystique' as opposed to the stoic passivity of the Mounties? Who escapes, or seems to escape, like Huckleberry Finn? Who is as ecstatic as Emily Dickinson? The same problem seems implied in the questions of mildly frustrated European journalists, who want to see the difference that Canadians want them to perceive. Mostof us, nevertheless,would agree that there is a difference. The problem lies in trying to find a model that would illustrate that difference . I would like to propose such a model, but by way of introduction I would like to beg your indulgence to reflect for a moment upon my own dialogue with this field. My interest in it was excited over twenty years ago, when, at the Learned Societies, I happened to attend Ronald Sutherland's presentation of his paper that later became the first chapter of his Second Image: Comparative Studies in Quebec/Canadian Literature. I cannot, therefore, claim the same kind of sentimental point of departure as Sutherland, who remarks in his introduction that his interest in the field "began on a Saturday night, in a dancehall on the outskirts of a small Quebec town. With the others in the 146 hall I was relaxing after three or four square-dance sets, while an attractive dark-eyed girl entertained us with French-Canadian chansons." Suddenly, with a shock of recognition, he realized that, while the words were French, the melody was an "old Scottish favorite." This was sufficient for Sutherland to realize that the mark of the two founding literatures was similarity. Considering his lecture, and reflecting later upon his introduction, I could not but observe that my experience was not the same. When I was asked several years later to address another association of the Learned Societies on the same topic, I could not help taking another point of departure. But by that time, we had witnessed the October Crisis and the rise to power of the Parti Quebecois. While it was possible to address the matter of the Canadian literatures as a federalist, I doubted the validity of such a position . My response was framed both by a rejection of Goethe's notion of Weltliterature and by an overture to Herder's appeal to the national in its relation to other literatures. It did not seem possible to me at that time to see the Canadian literatures as possessing anything in common other than geography, and I was not able to understand literature in its geophysical bearing. Nor wasI persuaded that their study need be restricted to anglophone or francophone writing, and in my conclusion I worked out a little coda that included allophone writing ("Canadian Literatures" 23-24). Upon reflection, it might be remarked that my turning to Herder, while not traditional in a Canadian context, is a normal point of departure for comparative literature itself.1 In turning to this problem again, however, I do not want to forget the late eighteenth century in Germany entirely, for it is a matrix of so much that is modern in a general sense. Let me direct your attention to Schiller's fiber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung , which Thomas Mann praised as "geistvoll wie nichts in der Welt" (320). Not the least of his admiration for it may have been the proto-structuralist inscription of its thinking. Whether its argument avails at all may be questionable , and perhaps it was fundamentally no more than Schiller's selfdefence against Goethe (Eckermann 350). It must be understood, however, for its basis in polemic; and it is as such that I intend to use it in order to provide a framework for what I take the Canadian literatures to be, particularlywith respect to American literature. I have chosen to speak of Schiller because his essay assists us in locating Canada ideologically and geophysically. Let us remember that the main fact about Canada wasthat it used to be called British North America, and one of the acts that ushered it into its modern phase chose that phrase as its name—that Canada is a part of (some...

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