Passing Observations upon the Canadian Literary Scene, 1985–1987

Concerning Vol. 21, No. 4, "Native Art History in Canada" The Journal of Canadian Studies wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada/Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines du Canada as well as of the Ontario Heritage Foundation for special help toward the publication of "Native Art History in Canada." This acknowledgement was inadvertently omitted in the issue itself. The Editors regret this oversight. Passing Observations Upon the Canadian Literary Scene, 1985-1987 Four publishing events come to mind in thinking about the state and business of Canadian letters over the past two years. Three of these can be commented upon in positive terms. The remaining one - the recent, longdelayed publication in England of Timothy Findley's Famous Last Words (1981) - requires more cautious and worrisome notice. Notwithstanding the large-scale publicity heaped on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Robertson Davies's What's Bred in the Bone as finalists in the 1986 Booker Prize sweepstakes, the two books which caught my attention were works of criticism. In 1985 NeWest Press published in Edmonton a precedent-making collection, Gaining Ground: European Critics on Canadian Literature, co-edited by Robert Kraetsch and Reingard M. Nischik. A product of the growing European interest in Canadian literature and the wanderings in European pastures of many Canadian writers and critics, Gaining Ground includes seventeen essays representing seven countries. While the bulk of the work concerns contemporary Anglo-Canadian writers like Atwood, Wiebe, and Kraetsch himself, two essays examine Hubert Aquin and Alain Grandbois while two others focus upon Leacock and Grove. Two interesting and useful features complete the collection. Co-editor Nischik of the University of Cologne provides an analysis of Canadian literary studies abroad. Her essay, "New Horizons," sketches the histories of ~volving programs in countries as disparate as Germany, England, Sweden, and Portugal. To this she adds a sixteen-page bibliography that gives flesh to the kinds of work earlier described. The second critical study is W.J. Keith's Canadian Literature in English (1985), written for the Longman "Literature in English" series. Confined by a format requiring generic treatment, comprehensiveness, an historical/cultural and literary chronology, and a bibliography of significant writers (that includes suggested secondary sources), Professor Keith met a daunting task with his usual ease, authority , and polish. While the book offers "one man's reading of Canadian literature in English from its earliest beginnings," Keith sets his perimeters wisely, emphasizing the pressures upon a country that selfJournal of Canadian Studies 3 Vol. 22. No. { (Pri11temps 1987 Spring) consciously evolved as an extension of the cultural traditions of Great Britain even as it was daily exposed to and influenced by the proximity, power, and atfractiveness of American views and energies. For Keith, the emerging Canadian literary tradition is not to be found in abstractions and their buzz-words but in "achieved" works, productions of quality written by Canadians. Trusting to his training and his taste, he focuses upon what he considers "the main stream" of English-Canadian literature, finding cause for guarded optimism in the signs of increasing confidence and growth in Canadian letters, criticism, and that altogether crucial area of readership. The third positive sign is the appearance, in rapid succession, of the first three volumes produced by the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts (CEECT). Located at Carleton University and directed by Mary Jane Edwards, the Centre has as its overall aim the preparation of twelve scholarly editions of pre-twentieth-century works of Canadian prose. With the long-awaited editions of Wacousta and Roughing It in the Bush in their final stages, CEECT has recently released The History ofEmily Montague by Frances Brooke, edited by Professor Edwards; Catharine Parr Traill's Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains, edited by Rupert Schieder; and James de Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Bottle, edited by Malcolm Parks. Products of thorough processes of collating and editing, these texts will do much , as will the results of the two Hubert Aquin projects in Quebec, to set standards for scholarly work in Canada. Together, such large-scale exercises constitute a kind of coming of...