Humanities in the University by Claude T. Bissell, and: On the Idea of a University by J.M. Cameron (review)

468 LETTERS IN CANADA 1978 reassuring themselves of their collective wisdom in the face of the world's indifference. George Grant is beyond that sort of thing, which is why the best commentary I have seen on his writing concerns his use of myth and rhetoric and doesn't bother to attribute to him prophetic powers (see R.D. MacDonald, 'The Persuasiveness of Grant's Lament for a Nation,' Studies in Canadian Literature, 2 [Summer 1977], 239-51). On the one hand, true believers; on the other, and outside the volume, the indifferent . The cover photo shows a figure who could double for the Commendatore . He has grasped the hand of this Don Giovanni of a culture, but it continues to ignore his embrace. (DENNIS DUFFY) Claude T. Bissell. Humanities in the University University of Ghana, 1977. 82 J.M. Cameron. On the Idea ofa University University of Toronto Press. xiii, 92. $10.00 These lectures by two distinguished members of the staff of the University of Toronto approach similar subjects from opposite directions: Professor Bissell concentrates on the proper place of the humanities in the university, and Professor Cameron deals with the essential character of the university, which he finds closely centred upon the humanities. A reviewer finds it hard to resist reaching for that standard examination question: 'Contrast and compare .. .' Bissell, an eminent administrator as president of Carleton University and then as president ofthe University of Toronto for a long and arduous term, is also a notable scholar, learned in English literature of the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, with a keen interest in the critical assessment of Canadian literature over the past several decades. It is therefore not surprising that he approaches his theme from the standpoint of English literature, finding therein the key to the future welfare of the humanities in the universities of the English-speaking world. Invited to give five lectures at the University of Ghana on this subject in 1976, rather a daunting assignment, Bissell showed considerable finesse in accommodating his general subject to familiar situations in Canada, with unexpected bridges to Ghana. His five lectures proceed briskly and directly to their objective, in two historical summaries of the past and present situation, neatly and fairly done, although any reviewer with a classical background is tempted to mutter that the classics, having been dethroned, are prematurely cast hence, when there is still evidence HUMANITIES 469 that they retain, in the original or in translation, an essential vitality which attracts many serious students who find much modern literature somewhat limp and flaccid. Canadian readers will be particularly interested in Bissell's third and fourth lectures in which he argues, altogether acceptably, that for the past four or five centuries in particular, not to speak of earlier ages, great literature has risen and declined in close conformity to national selfconfidence and buoyancy. Accordingly, he presents the familiar thesis that the cultural problem is baSically one of self-identification, of knowing who we are and therefore being able to relate ourselves comfortably to others. The current depressing pessimism of many Canadian writers and critics he attributes to the smothering encumbrance of the proximity of the American presence. One suspects that his fourth lecture on 'The Humanities and Technology ' must have had particular novelty for his audience, for in it he manifests a sympathetic expertise in an interpretation of Marshall McLuhan. He maintains that McLuhan, a humanist who has made technology and culture his special subjects, has thereby provided a modern key to an understanding of the arts. Even impatient sceptics will admire Bissell's loyal and valiant efforts to translate the oracular declarations of his friend into accessible language. Bissell's final lecture on 'The Faith of a Humanist' invites quotation at many points, but one sentence in particular proVides a harmonious transition to Cameron's collection of four lectures: 'To cut ourselves off from the past is to diminish ourselves, to simplify choice, and to turn the world into a self-fulfilling prophecy of animal satisfaction and eventual despair and destruction.' Cameron would not disagree, and he provides in his four lectures a fascinating disquisition, intersecting with Bissell's themes at many points, but his...