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Reflections on the Situation and Study of Early Canadian Literature in the Long Confederation Period
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Home Ground Final.indd 17 14-03-19 09:54 Reflections on the Situation and Study of Early Canadian Literature in the Long Confederation Period D. M. R. BENTLEY In 1886, Matthew Arnold famously responded with condescending scorn to a recently published Primer of American Literature: “Are we to have a Primer of Canadian Literature, and a Primer of Australian? . . . [T]hese things are not only absurd; they are also retarding” (11: 165). Two years earlier, the Canadian historian, journalist and champion of cosmopolitanism Joseph Edmund Collins had reacted similarly to the very thought of a “Canadian Literature,” asserting categorically that “[t]here is no Australian Literature, no Heligoland Literature, no Rockof Gibraltar Literature [and] neither is there a Canadian Literature” (614). If there were, he added, “we would be obliged to subdivide the term and say ‘a New Brunswick Literature,’ ‘a Nova Scotia Literature,’ ‘a British Columbia Literature.’” Not much less than a century later, Douglas Lochhead felt it necessary to preface the volumes in the University of Toronto Press’s Literature of Canada: Poetry and Prose in Reprint series, of which he was the general editor, with a note for all the Virginias asserting that “Yes, there is a Canadian literature. It does exist” (v). To the extent that they were opposed to the idea of treating the literature of any country or region as a selfcontained, hermeticallysealed entity, I entirely agree with Arnold and Collins, but it has nevertheless been my great pleasure and privilege to play a part over the last thirty years in confirming that there is indeed a Canadian literature—a distinctive body of poetry and prose written in and about Canada—with subdivisions of the sort that Collins mentions, and in establishing that the English Home Ground Final.indd 18 14-03-19 09:54 D. M. R. Bentley Canadian literary continuity not only begins some two centuries prior to Confederation but from the very beginning contains texts that are worthy of respect, close study, and classroom space. None of the work done on Canadian literature in the last three decades and more would have been possible, of course, without the trailblazing and groundbreaking efforts of preceding generations of Canadian literary scholars such as (to name only three who had a special impact on me) Malcolm Ross, Michael Gnarowski, and Carl F. Klinck. Each of these scholars made important, individual contributions to our understanding of the authors and areas that they studied, but collectively they also created a literary equivalent of the great Historical Atlas of Canada (1987–1990), an inspirationally collaborative work whose “national, regional, provincial, and thematic” plates most definitely constitute, in the words of its Foreword by William G. Dean, “a sound and lasting reference work, and . . . a quarry for specialized research by future generations of scholars” (n.p.). In my case, that specialized research has been largely in the field of Canadian poetry, with occasional forays into fiction and nonfictional prose, all undertaken on the premise that, no matter who its author or what its date, a text must be assumed at the outset of study and analysis to possess intellectual, formal, and aesthetic interest and integrity as well as historical and cultural significance and value. By applying this premise to works as diverse as Thomas Cary’s Abram’s Plains (1789), Charles G. D. Roberts’s New York Nocturnes (1898), and A. M. Klein’s “Portrait of the Poet as Landscape” (1948), I hope that I have succeeded, at least sporadically, in revealing the shapes within the texts that were merely waiting to be found, admired, enjoyed, and seriously studied. I hope, too, that as editor of Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews for over thirty years (is this perhaps a record for a scholarly journal?) and as editor of the Canadian Poetry Press for over twenty, I have provided other scholars with some hospitable surroundings in which to publish their own contributions to the study of what Ross so aptly calls “the impossible sum of our traditions.” Before abandoning the autobiographical mode in favour of less cloying subjects, I would like briefly to extol and instance the pleasures and benefits of recovering, reinvigorating, and extensively editing and annotating Canadian texts, for some of the most memorable moments in my excavations have occurred during the process of annotating works of poetry and prose that I mistakenly thought I had adequately researched and understood. For instance, it was while annotating the 18 [3.87.209.162...