Unnamed Country: The Struggle for a Prairie Fiction by Dick Harrison, and: The New Land: Studies in a Literary Theme ed. by Richard Chadbourne and Hallvard Dahlie, and: The Leavises, the ‘Social,’ and the Left by Garry Watson, and: The Compass: A Provincial Review ed. by John Baxter, Colin Ross, and John Thompson (review)

440 LETTERS IN CANADA 1978 Early in the play she speaks in rational accents of the prejudices of St Paul, and of the essential equality of the sexes. In the last scene she is transformed into one of a group of demented furies bent on the torture, mutilation, and murder of the helpless minister of the kirk. In this scene the idiom of the play lurches alarmingly from a familiar comedy of manners to a fantastic theatre of cruelty: Strike! females, strike! - his heart must now be crushed: Pull it Qut, pull1 - his tongue, too, must be hushed; Nor word of defence must he speak. Bind him down, like the dead, lest he squeak. Help! Presters, help! - there's nothing now but to choke: Hand here the rope! This would the saints provoke. That we can't kill him as we wish to, Without showing our fingers in the dish too; Or OUf brazen beaks Or OUf crimson cheeks - ... The true subject of this little play, never acknowledged or brought into focus, is the psycho-sexual pathology which flourishes within the confines of the respectable Protestant institutions of Ontario. Even now it is a somewhat explosive theme. Not surprisingly the dramatist shies away from it, and hides behind a pseudonym. 'CaroJi Candidus' puts one in mind of a grinning dwarf, blind to the dimensions of the beast he holds by the tail. Four further volumes of Lost Plays are planned. If the introductory critical comment can match the level of the editors' painstaking historical research, the series should prove exceptionally interesting. (MICHAEL TAIT) Dick Harrison . Unnamed Country: The Struggle for a Prairie Fiction University of Alberta Press 1977. xvi, 250, illus. $12.50 Richard Chadbourne and Hallvard Dahlie, editors. The New Land: Studies in a Literary Theme Wilfrid Laurier University Press (for the Calgary Institute for the Humanities). viii. 160. $4.50 paper Garry Watson. The Leavises, th e'Social: and the Left Brynmill Publishing '977. xv, 259· £4·50 HUMANITIES 441 Th eCompass: A Provincial Review. Edited by John Baxter, Colin Ross, and John Thompson Published three times a year at the University of Alberta Annual subscription: $8.00 individuals, $10.00 institutions What possible connection can exist between the publications listed above? That, I assume, will be a reader's first reaction. Superficially it seems a random gathering of unrelated writings, but in fact there are two important connections linking them together. First, they are all relevant to the continuing debate about 'the function of criticism at the present time'; second, they exemplify the remarkable current upsurge in literary-critical activity in Alberta (even Garry Watson, though publishing in Wales, is on the University of Alberta faculty). This second connection points to a development of considerable cultural interest. 'A Note on "Provincial''' in the third number of The Compass makes the point forcefully. In the late 1970s, it argues, 'the great metropolitan and university centres - Paris, London, Cambridge, New York, Yale, Toronto - are no longer quite so attractive and so obviously superior in terms of artistic and intellectual excellence.' This observation strikes me as not only healthily challenging but profoundly true. The writings under review, of course, need not be representative, but at least they constitute different voices heard from an intriguingly different direction. What do they have to offer? Are we justified in looking for a new example in the west? Much of the importance of Unnamed Country derives from the simple fact that it discusses the prairie as 'here' rather than 'there.' The first chapter, 'Eastern Eyes: The Problem of Seeing the Prairie: sets the prevailing tone. This is a study of the western literary experience written by a westerner, attempting to bring to the literature a native response independent of the conventional view usually imposed from points east. There is a palpable sense of bitterness about the whole book, but this seems to me justifiable and admirably controlled. We sense it in such statements as the folloWing: 'While never a majority on the prairie, [English-speaking settlers) have always been the dominant minority supported by the power that emanates from the institutions of Central Canada' (p xiv). But this is not just another stale reconsideration...