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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
The Literature of Nation-Building
 After
confederation in 1867 Canada can be seen as inhabited
by a people on the road to nationhood.
This coincided
with the era in which the modern world came into being, through
a period of rapid social change which occurred initially in the
West, and rapidly spread throughout the world. In one way this process
was seen as the natural, logical outcome
of events. One thing led to another in a logical order. It
was thus also the era of realism in literature, where plots
were worked out in a coherent
and predictable
fashion,
whereby
the conclusion followed rationally
from what went before, though much of the actual content might be
romantic fantasy.
Quebec's
difficult relationship with this nation-building process is perhaps
seen in a novel like William
Kirby's The Golden Dog (1877), a romantic historical novel
set at the time of the fall
of the French colony to the English, and concerning power struggles
among that colony's rulers. Though
based on an actual historical situation, it adds lots of exciting
elements including star-crossed
lovers,
witches,
and
underground tunnels, and was popular for those reasons.
The title came from a prophecy
in the novel that "A
time will come, which is not yet. When I'll bite him by whom I'm
bit." Perhaps that is a sign of a sleeping Quebecois
resistance to English Canadian rule.
Probably
the most famous single work of Canadian literature, loved by readers
all over the world, is the children's story Anne of Green Gables
(1908)written by Lucy
Maud Montgomery. The author was born and raised
on Prince Edward Island
and the novel tells the story of a redheaded
orphan
girl, Anne, and her adolescent
predicaments
in the idyllic
setting
of a small island town.
Robert
Service, who wrote in the early years of the century, is
one of Canada's best—known poets, famous for his memorable and entertaining
rhyming
verse,
which told stories about life in the northern territories, such
as "The Shooting of Dan McGrew".
Duncan
Campbell Scott (1862—1947) was a poet and short—story writer,
a member of a group known as the "confederation" poets,
since they were all born around the time of Canadian confederation.
He was an official with the government's Indian (Native Canadian)
Affairs Department, and many of his poems reflect the experience
he had travelling around Canada, witnessing the tragedy of native
life, and the beauty of the Canadian wilderness. His very modern
short stories were psychologically
realistic portrayals
of the citizens of a small village in Quebec. That
focus
on
individual psychology
is
an indication
of
a change in the cultural world from the relative
certainties
of the late 19th century to the questioning of the 20th.
Perhaps
the most powerful symbol of that change was the horrendous
mechanized
conflict
of the First World War in which Canada played a significant role
(and lost many soldiers), and thus acquired
a
separate identity from Britain. W.H. New, a Canadian
literary expert, notes that soon after the war Duncan Campbell Scott
commented that the "poetry
of our generation is wayward and discomfiting bitter with the turbulence
of an uncertain and ominous time." Modernism
had arrived.
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