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Reviewed by:
  • Northrop Frye on Canada
  • Jon Kertzer (bio)
Jean O’Grady and David Staines, editors. Northrop Frye on Canada. Volume 12 of Collected Works of Northrop Frye University of Toronto Press. xlviii, 741. $125.00

In a tribute to Don Harron, Northrop Frye praised his former student for his 'unusual gifts as a popularizer, which for me was by no means a condescending word: I am a popularizer myself, in a different way, and take that side of my work very seriously.' Perhaps Frye was thinking of his Canadian criticism, which he aimed at a wider audience than his theoretical studies. An observation in his 'Conclusion' to The Literary History of Canada gave the impression that he regarded Canadian literature as inferior to the work of 'the world's major writers' but that he was willing to treat it more leniently because of its 'social significance,' a value that he earlier had disparaged as 'usually disastrous' to literary excellence. The impression that he was either unfair or excessively generous to Canadian literature should be corrected by the 674 pages of essays in this volume, which display his prolonged, patient, insightful, and sometimes whimsical response to Canadian writing, painting, and history. It is remarkable that in such a busy career he found time to survey the Canadian scene so carefully.

This is the twelfth of thirteen hefty volumes of Frye's collected works. It allows readers to appraise all of his writing on Canadian literature and art, though not on other cultural topics, which receive a separate volume. Here are all the early reviews from Canadian Forum, the yearly poetry surveys from 'Letters in Canada,' the occasional pieces for which there was no end of occasions, and the more substantial essays that are familiar from other anthologies. There are also two introductions by the editors, the first tracing Frye's writings on Canada, the second outlining his recurring themes and critical responses to them.

As a critic, Frye was drawn to the big picture. The momentum of his theorizing pushed him to seek the broadest possible view by setting literary works in an ever-expanding network as wide as human imagination, a [End Page 569] network whose unifying principles he articulated in a symphony of elegant patterns. What can be lost in this immense project are the specific virtues of specific works, which are felt, as he admitted in a footnote to Anatomy of Criticism, only in 'the direct experience of literature, where uniqueness is everything.' Fortunately, this unique experience is often evident in his reviews of Canadian poetry and art, which begin by generalizing about 'the lyric imagination' or 'Canadian identity,' but then record his sensitive responses to individual poems and paintings. Among the pleasures of this book are the judicious phrases with which he delivers his impressions. Tom Thompson's colour harmony 'is not a concord but a minor ninth.' Louis Dudek 'is a good poet who does not remind us of better ones.' David Milne paints seagulls 'that flap like unwanted thoughts across the foreground of a picture.' 'One can get as tired of buttocks in Mr. Layton as of buttercups in the Canadian Poetry Magazine.' Reading through this book reveals how Frye gradually assembled a range of judgments and preferences that coalesced into those themes - the garrison mentality, the frostbite of colonialism, the continent as leviathan - that inspired one generation of Canadian critics and provoked the next.

An 'Editorial Statement' from Canadian Forum in 1948 proclaims 'the fight to maintain and develop civilized life in Canada.' The remark's pugnaciousness may reflect postwar determination, but the same resolve to defend Canadian culture by refining it appears throughout this collection. Years later in 1989, Frye neatly (as always) divided national culture into three levels: popular lifestyle, traditional ideology, and creative powers. Throughout his long career, he never doubted the hierarchy implicit in this analysis, or the duty of intellectuals to account for the cross-fertilization of the three levels while maintaining their distinction. He never doubted that the highest power was the creative imagination, which expands and invigorates culture.

Jon Kertzer

Jonathan Kertzer, Department of English, University of Calgary

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