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● Introduction:
the Literature of Survival
● Native
Canadian Mythology
● Early
Colonial Literature
● The
Literature of Nation-Building
● Canada in the Ascendant
● Canadian
Literature in the Modern World
Text
Introduction: the Literature of Survival
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| Margaret Atwood |
 A
nation is a complex
thing, and the literature written by members of that nation over
history is also complex. The
idea that there is such a thing as "American" or "British",
or in this case, "Canadian" literature suggests another
question: what makes this literature different from those other
nations' literatures? How can we distinguish
it? The famous Canadian novelist, Margaret
Atwood has written that we should look for a central idea
which appears in many different authors and works and periods. Such
an idea, if found, may be thought
of as a basic symbol for that national culture. Such
a thing, however loosely defined, would of course be a generalization,
a simplification of that complexity mentioned above, but nevertheless
perhaps a useful one.
Atwood
suggests that for American literature that central symbol is "the
frontier":
the idea that there is always a new and better place to escape to
over the horizon—an
idea seen at its most obvious
in the well—known stories of the American west before the 20th century.
For
Britain she thinks the corresponding
symbol,
for obvious reasons, might be that of "the island": a
closed world which individuals have to deal with as it is.
Shakespeare's Tempest
might be a good example of this symbol's appearance, or Robinson
Crusoe: Defoe's famous story of a shipwrecked
sailor.
In
the case of Canadian literature Atwood sees a very common concern
with the idea of "survival" and it is this idea,
in its many different forms, which she says we should think of as
the central symbol of her nation's literature.
She
describes a number of ways in which this symbol appears: a concern
with "simple" survival in the face of hostile elements—a
reflection of the dangerous natural world in which Canadians find
themselves, with huge distances to cross to get help, endless forests
to get lost in, hard winters to freeze in, wild animals to attack
them. Just
surviving in these conditions was a full—time job for Canadians,
native or settler, prior
to this
century.
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| Quebec Landscape
by A.Y. Jacson |
This
idea can extend to concern with "cultural" survival in
a variety of ways: the attempt to maintain a Canadian identity
in
the first place that does not disappear into a weak version
of
the old colonial power's (Britain's); the dogged
persistence
of native Canadian peoples to maintain their distinctive cultures
against overwhelming
European dominance;
the assertive
survival of a French-Canadian identity in Quebec
after the English had conquered the French in
Canada; the survival of any kind of overall Canadian identity while
troubled by these internal differences, and while being
flooded from outside by the culture of their huge neighbour to the
south: the USA. In all these ways the Canadian identity
is under threat and perhaps defined by that threat, so that "survival"
may indeed be a useful idea with which to approach
Canada and Canadian literature.
Obviously
from what we know so far about Canada, and as is obvious from the
above paragraph, internal differences forming the Canadian "mosaic"
form another way to approach Canadian literature, dividing it under
cultural groupings:
"native",
"English", "French" and so on. Obviously, too,
Canada today is not the same Canada that was being written about
in 1850, or 1930, so a historical distinction should be made: analysts
of national literatures often identify distinct periods with particular
characteristics, and this has been done in the Canadian case too.
There is also the problem of definition: what is to be included
in "Canadian" literature? Does it include pre—European
mythologies, pre-independence literature, non-Canadian writers
who lived in Canada, Canadian writers who lived abroad? This study
will take a wide view of these matters and include any literature
with an important Canadian aspect of whatever kind in a basically
historical structure.
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