Studies in Literature and the Humanities. Innocence of Intent by George Whalley, and: The Impossible Sum of Our Traditions: Reflections on Canadian Literature by Malcolm Ross (review)

Carol Pope and Rough Trade all make appearances. But the notions of a 'postmodern detritus: of 'the deadness of the spirit: and of 'a culture of forgetting, of forgetting of origins and destinations, ... from trend to trend, from ad to ad' are ones which have already been establishedamong literary critics in their discussions of the contours of modernism and postmodernism. This does not, of course, undermine the veracity of the authors' claims; it is simply to suggest that in equipping themselves with 'the radical insights of poststructuralist art ... and poststructuralist theory: Kroker and Cook appear to promise a more potent critique of postmodern culture than The Postmodem Scene actually delivers. Kroker and Cook are most successful finally in their description of the intellectual culture that informs the postmodern condition. In demonstrating how contemporary life conforms to their theoretical model, however, they can at times give the reader occasion to ponder the useful limits of cultural analysis: what is to be gained, for instance, from employing critical theory to designate AIDS, Anorexia, and Herpes as poststructuralist diseases? (THOMAS CARMICHAEL) George Whal1ey. Studies in Literature and the Humanities. Innocence of Intent. Selected and introduced by Brian Crick and John Ferns McGill-Queen's University Press 1985. x, 270. $27.50 Malcolm Ross. The Impossible Sum of Our Traditions: Reflections on Canadum Literature. With an introductory essay by David Staines McClelland and Stewart. 211. $19.95 Each of these books gathers together a judicious selection of the writings of a distinguished Canadian humanist. At this point, however, resemblances give way to contrasts. George Whalley, alas, died in 1983, and the preparation of the volume under review became a tribute to his memory; happily, however, to adapt a line from W.H. Auden, we've Malcolm Ross (God bless him!) with us yet, and he continues his manifold activities in a vigorous retirement. Whalley was the kind of humanist who worked quietly butinfluentiallyin library, study, and classroom; highly respected by his colleagues, he was less known than he deserved to be among the public at large. Ross, though undoubtedly prominent and successful within the academy, felt the need to carry his crusade into the marketplace , and dramatically altered a nation's reading habits in so doing. Whalley argued eloquently and persuasively for a traditional wisdom in danger of being forgotten; Ross campaigned - and campaigns - actively for the recognition ofan achievement we hardly knew that we possessed. At a time when the humanities (or, as Whalley preferred to call them, 14b LEITERS IN CANADA 19~6 'humane studies') are under pressure if not attack, both types are desperately needed. All the essays in Innocence of Intent have appeared in print before, though they were scattered inconveniently through a variety of periodicals . The editors are fully justified in bringing them together, for the process draws attention to the impressive coherence ofWhalley's humanisticattitudes . This is clearly evident in the three opening items: a study of Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner'; a probing and ultimately negative review of Frye's Anatomy of Criticism; and a fascinating account of the art of translation with Aristotle's Poetics as the text in question. (The first and third of these, incidentally, originally appeared in this journal.) Whalley was too modest a man to claim the title of polymath, but he admired polymaths, recognized the danger in 'excessive specialization, and made the writings of polymaths his constant study. His main scholarly work, of course, centred upon Coleridge, reaching fruition in his book on the Asra poems and his edition of Coleridge's marginalia. And characteristically his article on 'The Ancient Mariner' insists, against a lunatic fringe of the New Criticism, upon the importance of recognizing the unique personality and individual voice that shape a text. 'Behind every utterance: he remarks in a laterlecture, 'there is a person ... Every successful utterance [the deliberate repetition of the word is worth pondering] is a reconciliation between the needs of the speaker and the demands oflanguage.' He explains convincingly why Coleridge was impelled to write the poem out of deep personal urgencies and how the poem would be unrecognizably different if the same story were told by a different poet. His objections to Anatomy of Criticism...