CANADIAN LITERATURE

Literature written in English and French by the peoples of Canada. As a young, pioneering country, Canada put more of its energies into economic development than into the arts. As material circumstances improved, however, two literatures developed, reflecting Canada's dual cultural heritage. At first they evinced a common interest in the wilderness and in regional locales and tended to imitate European styles. In the 20th century a growing sense of national identity was reflected in literatures of maturity and distinction.

CANADIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

Because English-speaking Canadians were more numerous and diversified than French-speaking Canadians, Canadian literature written in English has been until recently more abundant and varied than that written in French.

Colonial Period.

Among early Canadian works in English were the accounts of 18th- and early 19th-century explorers such as Samuel Hearne (1745–92), Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser (1776–1862), and David Thompson. The first novel produced in Canada, indeed in North America, was The History of Emily Montague (1769), an account of contemporary Québec, realistically written by Frances Moore Brooke (1724–89), wife of an English army chaplain.

In the early 19th century, Oliver Goldsmith (1794–1861) wrote The Rising Village (1825), a book-length poem extolling a pioneer community, in reply to The Deserted Village (1770) by the British writer Oliver Goldsmith, his great-uncle. Charles Sangster (1822–93), in St. Lawrence and the Saguenay (1856), was one of the first poets to describe the natural beauties of the land.

Wacousta (1832) by John Richardson (1796–1852), about Pontiac's Rebellion (1763) was the first novel based on Canadian history. In the humorous essays of The Clockmaster (1836), Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) presented the vulgar but enterprising Yankee peddler San Slick as a satire on the comparatively lazy Nova Scotians. The rigors of pioneer life were described in two autobiographical books, Backwoods of Canada (1836) by Catherine Parr Traill (1802–99) and Roughing It in the Bush (1852) by her sister Susanna Moodie (1803–85).

Confederation to World War I

The Confederation of 1867 encouraged a sense of national identity, which stimulated literary activity. Inspired by the English romantics' and early Victorians' love of nature. Canadians looked for themes in their own natural landscape.

Poetry.

The first significant Canadian poets were those of the Confederation school, led by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts (1860–1943). His romantic Orion and Other Poems (1880) stimulated other writers, and in his Songs of the Common Day (1893) he vividly described his native New Brunswick countryside. Bliss Carman, Roberts's cousin, gained fame through love songs and nature poems, tinged with romantic melancholy and nostalgia. Among his best-known collections are Low Tide on Grand Pré (1893) and The Pipes of Pan (5 vol., 1902–5).

Other important Confederation poets were Archibald Lampman (1861–99) and Duncan Campbell Scott. Lampman described rural Ontario in Among the Miller (1888). Scott took the most dramatic view of the Ontario landscape in New World Lyrics and Ballads (1905) and Beauty and Life (1921). As head of the Department of Indian Affairs, he wrote poems sympathetic to Indian culture. His volumes of short stories, In the Village of Viger (1896) and The Witching of Elspie (1923), reveal a deep interest in psychology as well. Wilfred Campbell (1858?–1918) described contrasts in Canadian climate and landscape.

The most popular Canadian poet of the early 20th century was English-born Robert W. Service. His Songs of a Sourdough (1907), including “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” was the product of his years in the Yukon. Although his work has been highly praised, Service himself never pretended to be anything but a rhymester.

Prose.

The two principal novelists of the late 19th century, William Kirby (1817–1906) and Sir Gilbert Parker, wrote historical romances concerning the trials and pleasures of life in a vast new land. Kirby's Golden Dog (1877) and Parker's The Seats of the Mighty (1897), both set in Québec, began a trend toward colorful novels of a glorified past.

Around the turn of the century, a literary taste developed for regional novels that gave a rather idyllic description of rural life of the time. Ralph Connor (pseudonym of C. W. Gordon, 1860–1937), once a missionary in the Rockies, wrote Black Rock (1898) and The Man from Glengarry (1901) about the west. Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) set her classic children's story, Anne of Green Gables (1908), on her native Prince Edward Island; perennially popular, it has been staged and filmed several times.

The English-born humorist Stephen Leacock, a professor of economics at McGill University, wrote sharp, witty social criticism in such works as Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), set in Ontario, and Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914).

1920s to World War II.

During the 1920s realist writers were critical of Canadian values and institutions, a tendency strengthened by Canadians' experience of the Great Depression and World War I.

Poetry.

One of the finest poets of this period was the Newfoundland-born English professor Edwin John Pratt (1882–1964). His poetry reflects his fascination with the sea, his sense of the impersonal violence of nature, and his fundamentally tragic world view. In The Titanic (1935) and Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940), he amply proved that the ancient epic form is vital in the 20th century.

Poets living in Montréal made the 1930s and 1940s one of the most exciting periods in the history of Canadian poetry in English. They published in little literary magazines, cheaper than books in a depressed economy, which encouraged rivalry and urged them to be aware of their roots and guard against excessive British or American influence. The leaders were Francis Reginald Scott (1899–1985) and A. J. M. Smith (1902–80), who were also concerned with social issues and with literary criticism. Later they compiled The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, Invective, and Disrespectful Verse: Chiefly by Canadians (1957), which perhaps belies the cliché that Canadians are incapable of self-criticism. Another of these early Montréal poets was Abraham Moses Klein (1909–72). Steeped in Jewish tradition, he wrote lyrically and with deep understanding of Jews and other minorities.

Prose.

One of the first writers of sociological novels was the European-born Frederick Philip Grove (1871–1948). Years as a farmhand and schoolmaster on the Manitoba prairies inspired his book of sketches, Over Prairie Trails (1922), and the two powerful novels Settlers of the Marsh (1925) and Fruits of the Earth (1933), in which he described pioneer life with strength, vigor, and an astute eye. He is often weak and tedious in style and characterization, however.

Combining the traditions of the late 19th-century historical romances and early 20th-century regional idylls was Mazo de la Roche, the most widely read Canadian novelist of her day. Beginning with Jalna (1927), she created a 16-volume chronicle of the Whiteoak family and of Jalna, their Ontario estate.

Morley Callaghan sympathetically explored individuals in conflict with society in They Shall Inherit the Earth (1935) and The Loved and the Lost (1951). Hugh MacLennan studied various strains of the Canadian heritage in Barometer Rising (1941), Two Solitudes (1945), and The Watch That Ends the Night (1959). Early in their careers both Callaghan and MacLennan were commended for their realism, psychological honesty, and contributions to defining Canadian character. Since then, however, their reputations have declined. Other social realist novels are As for Me and My House (1941), an affecting picture of the depression years on the prairies, by Sinclair Ross (1908–96), and Who Has Seen the Wind? (1947), a boy's experience of a Saskatchewan village, by W. O. Mitchell (1914– ).

Late 20th Century.

Since World War II, Canadian literature has gained in volume and creativity, reflecting and encouraging a heightened national consciousness. Produced in a time of rebellion and of breaks with tradition, it has become more experimental in approach and universal in theme. Many critics considered Canadian poetry of the 1970s the best being written in the English-speaking world.

Poetry.

Perhaps the most significant voices in poetry were those of Earle Birney (1904–95) and Dorothy Livesay (1909–96), both of whom had written of social problems in the 1930s. Birney's David (1942), set in the Canadian Rockies of his youth, continues to captivate readers by its powerful language and intriguing story of a man's search for truth through encountering nature. Birney's lyrical style and controlled humanism have never faltered in such later works as Ice, Cod, Bell, or Stone (1962) and Near False Creek Mouth (1964). His Collected Poems appeared in 1975. Livesay has been humanistically concerned with the individual's efforts to overcome the forces of destruction within and without. Her work, such as The Unquiet Bed (1967), Collected Poems (1972), and The Phases of Love (1982), seemed to become more youthful and accomplished as she grew older, revealing a sensitive, understanding mind.

Raymond Souster (1921– ), Louis Dudek (1918– ), and Irving Layton (1912–2006) criticized materialist Canadian society. Using colorful, earthy language, the Romanian-born Layton attacked smugly complacent middle-class morality in The Laughing Rooster (1964) and Periods of the Moon (1967). A selection of his verse was published in 1977. Also important were Patricia K. Page (1916– ), interested in psychology, the neoromantic Anne Wilkinson (1910–61), and Miriam Waddington (1917– ), who emphasized the beneficence of nature.

Margaret Avison (1918– ), in Winter Sun (1960) and The Dumbfounding (1966), lyrically expressed her Christian faith. Leonard Cohen (1934– ) wrote emotionally of his own love and art and of 20th-century evil. Margaret Atwood explored the anxieties accompanying poetic self-realization. Other noteworthy figures were Al Purdy (1918– ; The Stone Bird, 1981), Phyllis Webb (1927– ), Alden Nowlan (1933–83), and experimental aural and oral poets Bill Bissett (1939– ) and B. P. Nichol (1944– ).

Prose.

Major novelists of the 1950s included Ernest Buckler (1908–84), whose Mountain and the Valley (1952) concerns frustrated artists in Nova Scotia, and Ethel Wilson (1890–1980), who wrote of women's self-fulfillment in The Equations of Love (1952) and Swamp Angel (1954), both set in British Columbia. Aspects of the Jewish experience are treated by Abraham Moses Klein in his novel The Second Scroll (1951), a modern search for Israel, and by Mordecai Richler in his satiric, antimaterialist Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959).

According to many critics, the best novelists of the 1960s and 1970s were Robertson Davies and Margaret Laurence (1926–87). Davies moved from satirical novels and plays to Jungian psychological examination of oddly assorted characters in his Deptford Trilogy: Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1975). His popularity continued with The Rebel Angels (1982), What's Bred in the Bone (1985), and The Cunning Man (1995). Laurence's writing is distinguished by penetrating characterizations and fine technique. In The Stone Angel (1964), A Jest of God (1966), and The Diviners (1974), she traces a heroine's progress toward self-realization.

Other contemporary novelists produced more experimental works, such as The Double Hook (1959) by Sheila Watson (1909– ), The Studhorse Man (1969) by Robert Kroetsch (1927– ), and Bear (1976) by Marian Engel (1933–85). Several poets turned to fiction, including Leonard Cohen, who wrote The Favorite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966), and Margaret Atwood. Her feminist outlook shapes her several novels, including Surfacing (1972), Life Before Man (1979), Bodily Harm (1981), and The Handmaid's Tale (1986); The Blind Assassin (2000), the saga of an Ontario family in the 1930s, won her the Booker Prize for that year. Among writers of short stories are Alice Munro, Norman Levine (1924– ), and Jane Rule (1931– ). Mavis Gallant (1922– ), although a longtime resident of France, appraises her native country clearly in Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories (1981). Michael Ondaatje combines autobiographical elements with the history of his native Sri Lanka where he lived until the age of 19. His novel The English Patient (1992) received the Booker Prize (1992) and was made into a successful film in 1995. In 2002 Yann Martel (1963– ) became the third Canadian to win the Booker Prize, for his novel Life of Pi (2001), which explores issues of faith and religion.

Farley Mowat (1921– ) has written several very popular nonfiction books on Native Americans (People of the Deer, 1952), on the survival of endangered species (Never Cry Wolf, 1963, and A Whale for the Killing, 1972), and on problems of the Canadian North (The Great Betrayal: Arctic Canada Now, 1976). Mordecai Richler's nonfictional Home Sweet Home: My Canadian Album (1984) mingles autobiography and journalistic essays.

Drama has been slower to develop in a country of widely spaced small communities. In the mid-20th century, increased interest in drama was reflected in the establishment of theaters such as the repertory theater in Stratford, Ont.; the Shaw Festival in Niagara, Ont.; and the Vancouver Playhouse in British Columbia.

Two of the most noteworthy literary critics were George Woodcock (1912–95) and Northrop Frye. Woodcock, a believer in social revolution, wrote poetry, history, drama, and travel books in addition to criticism. Frye's Anatomy of Criticism (1957) is a highly influential study of English literary themes; he also wrote The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination (1971) and The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981), among other works.. University of Toronto professor Marshall McLuhan received wide attention for his theory proclaiming that printed literature is being superseded by electronic means of mass communication. Somewhat ironically, his own book The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967) enjoyed a great vogue.

CANADIAN LITERATURE IN FRENCH

Until the mid-20th century Canadian literature in French focused primarily on religion, Canadian history, and patriotism. Since then it has become more involved in the concerns of contemporary Western society.

Colonial Period.

The earliest Canadian works in French were written by 16th- and 17th-century explorers and missionaries. Particularly informative are the accounts of the 1534–35 voyage of Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain's Voyages de la Nouvelle France occidentale, dicte Canada (Voyages in Western New France, called Canada, 2 vol., 1632) and Les relations des Jésuites (Jesuit Reports, 1632–73), annual reports of Jesuit missionaries about their lives among the Indians. Letters by the Ursuline nun Marie de I'Incarnation (1599–1672) are filled with details of life in New France.

19th Century.

Resentment of the English conquest, intensified by the Union Act of 1840 and Confederation in 1867, strengthened a deep sense of French-Canadian patriotism. It affected the first novelists, P. I. F. Aubert de Gaspé (1814–41), who filled his Influence d'un livre (Influence of a Book, 1837) with Québec folklore, and P. J. O. Chauveau (1820–90), who described the decline of French Canada after the conquest in Charles Guérin (1852). This patriotism found its classic expression in the Histoire du Canada (1845–48), written by François Xavier Garneau (1809–66) to disprove Governor-General Lord Durham's statement that French Canada had neither a history nor a literature.

Taking Garneau as their prophet, poets, novelists, historians, and journalists met at the Québec city bookshop of Octave Crémazie. At its height in the 1860s, this Québec group set the style for oratorical patriotic works, modeled on French romantic poetry, that dominated French-Canadian literature for the rest of the century. Crémazie, considered the father of French-Canadian poetry, influenced the younger poet Louis Honoré Fréchette, who based his Légende d'un peuple (1887) on French-Canadian history. Pamphile Lemay (1837–1918), author of Les gouttelettes (1904), and William Chapman (1850–1917) in Les rayons du nord (The Northern Lights, 1910) vividly recreated rural Québec life in poetic form.

Also prominent in the Québec group was Abbé Henri Raymond Casgrain, who wrote Légendes canadiennes (1861), literary criticism, and histories such as Montcalm et Lévis (1891; Wolfe and Montcalm, 1964). Joseph Charles Taché (1820–94) told tales of lumbermen and trappers in Forestiers et voyageurs (1884), and Antoine Gérin-Lajoie (1824–82) tried to discourage French-Canadian emigration in the propaganda novel Jean Rivard: le defricheur (Jean Rivard: the Settler, 1862). Other novelists wrote historical romances set in New France; they include Napoléon Bourassa (1827–1916) and Philippe Joseph Aubert de Gaspé (1786–1871), whose Les anciens canadiens (1863) became a classic.

Early 20th Century.

French-Canadian life continued to be a major theme in early 20th-century literature through the terroir (“country”), or regionalist, school, which stressed the bonds between the habitant, or farmer, and the ancestral land. One of the best terroir poets was Nérée Beauchemin (1850–1931), whose Floraisons matutinales (Morning Efflorescence, 1897) and Patrie intime (Intimate Birthplace, 1928) express his devotion to Québec. Among terroir novelists were Ernest Choquette (1862–1941), Harry Bernard (1898–1979), and especially French-born Louis Hémon, who lived with a habitant family in order to write Maria Chapdelaine (posthumously serialized, 1914; pub. 1916). Abbé Lionel Adolphe Groulx (1878–1967) vehemently expressed his patriotism in Vers L'émancipation (Towards Emancipation, 1921) and Histoire du Canada Français. . . (2 vol., 1962).

The Montréal school of poets, which flourished in Montréal between 1895 and 1930, was influenced by French Parnassians and symbolists; its members emphasized aesthetics and technique. Particularly original and sensuous was the work of Émile Nelligan (1879–1941) before he lost his reason at the age of 20. Paul Morin (1889–1963) drew on his Mediterranean travels for the vivid, technically complex Paon d'émail (Enamel Peacock, 1911) and Poèmes de cendre et d'or (Poems of Ashes and Gold, 1922). Also noteworthy are the nostalgic lyrics of the lapsed Jesuit Louis Dantin (pseudonym of Eugène Seers, 1865–1945) and the reflective works of Albert Lozeau (1878–1924) and Jean Charbonneau (1875–1960).

As a result of urbanization, the Great Depression, and World War II, the proud cultural isolation of French Canada began to break down, and writers became more introspective, realistic, and innovative. The poets Hector de Saint-Denys-Garneau (1912–43), François Hertel (pseudonym of Rodolphe Dubé, 1905–85), and Alain Grandbois (1900–75) experimented with free verse and symbolism to express philosophical abstractions and awareness of death. The novelist Albert Laberge (1871–1960) had already subjected Québec tradition to harsh realism in La scouine (1918; Bitter Bread, 1977). That culture was further criticized and exposed by Claude Henri Grignon (1894–1976) in Un homme et son péché (A Man and His Sin, 1933), Jean Charles Harvey (1891–1967) in Les demi-civilisés (1934; Sackcloth for Barner, 1938), and Ringuet (pseudonym of Philippe Panneton, 1895–1960) in Trente arpents (1938; Thirty Acres, 1940).

Late 20th Century.

After World War II and especially in the nationalist 1960s, new writers appeared, writing in many different modes with great technical skill.

A poet of major stature was Anne Hébert, whose surrealist, symbolist works such as Les songes en équilibre (Dreams in Equilibrium, 1942) and Le tombeau des rois (The Tomb of Kings, 1953) concerned mental anguish, solitude, and death; she also was noted for her powrful and evocative novels, set mostly in her native Québec. Pierre Trottier (1925– ) in Le combat contre Tristan (The Battle Against Tristan; 1951) presented a tragic drama of love and death that evoked the troubled disunity of Canada. Also criticizing or lamenting the modern world were Paul Marie Lapointe (1929– ), Gatien Lapointe (1931–83), and Fernand Ouellette (1930– ). Among other notable poets was Jacques Poulin (1937– ), author of the experimental “novel-poem” Coeur de la baleine bleue (Heart of the Blue Whale, 1970).

Many novelists turned to social satire. In Bonheur d'occasion (1945; The Tin Flute, 1947) and Alexandre Chenevert (1954; The Cashier, 1955), Gabrielle Roy (1909–83) described the disturbing effect of industrialization and the city on human dignity, suggesting that such pressures may be withstood by cultivating compassion and love. La détresse et l'enchantement (Distress and Enchantment), the first volume of her autobiography, was published posthumously in 1984. Roger Lemelin (1919– ) wrote of urban working-class life in Les Plouffe (1948; The Plouffe Family, 1948). This seemingly benign satire, popular in both French- and English-speaking Canada, was made into a film in 1982. Germaine Guèvremont (1900–68), on the other hand, realistically depicted rural life. The prolific writer Yves Thériault (1916–83), as well as Gerard Bessette (1920– ), and Jean Simard (1916– ), criticized the puritanical attitudes and other negative aspects of French-Canadian culture.

Other novelists were concerned with human inner nature. André Giroux (1916– ) and Robert Élie (1915–73) expressed some confidence in the human spirit. Particularly sensitive is Poussière sur la ville (1953; Dust over the City, 1955), a study of despair, by André Langevin (1927– ). The French Jewish immigrant Monique Bosco (1927– ) wrote of postwar rootlessness in Un amour maladroit (An Awkward Love, 1961), and the symbolist Hubert Aquin (1929–77) concluded the impossibility of freedom in Prochain episode (The Next Installment, 1965). One of the most devastating psychological novels is Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (1965; A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, 1966) by Marie Claire Blais. Also notable is L'avalée des avalés (1966; The Swallower Swallowed, 1968) by Rejean Ducharme (1942– ). Reflecting French-Canadian nationalism, Michel Tremblay (1942– ) used the Montréal vernacular in dramas, which, in translation, were also enjoyed by English audiences. His first play was Les belles-soeurs (1968; trans. The Sisters-in-law, 1973); he was also known for his mostly biographical novels, written in the late 1970s and ‘80s.

Beginning about the 1980s, writers whose ethnic origins were other than French, such as the Italian-born Canadian playwright Marco Micone (1945– ) and the Chinese-born Canadian novelist Ying Chen (1961– ), introduced new themes and styles of expression to French-Canadian literature. D.G.S., DONALD G. STEPHENS, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S.A.