EN:

One of the most intriguing passages in any of D.C. Scott's Indian poems occurs near the end of "At Gull Lake: August, 1810." In the passage, Keejigo, the half-breed protagonist of the poem, goes through a process of alchemical transmutation, as suggested by Scott's description of the rainbow that forms after her death. Thus, a full understanding of Scott's poem depends on the recognition that in the poem's conclusion Scott draws upon the alchemical notion of a close correspondence, almost an identity, between the transmutation of metals and spiritual purification and regeneration. As well, it can be argued that in a small amount of Scott's work there is the presence of various images and ideas which are evocative of hermeticism and that the poet may have been acquainted with the hermetical writings of such writers as Henry and Thomas Vaughan.

EN:

Almost simultaneously in 1857, British parliamentarians and colonists in Canada West commissioned survey expeditions of the western part of Canada. The Palliser (British) and Hind (Canadian) surveys overlapped very little of the country they charted and assessed, but they did coincide in one major respect: their reports indicate that the pervasive schemata of the Sublime and Picturesque, which had governed earlier landscape responses to the West by Britons, extended even to scientific descriptions of the land. This eighteenth-century schemata had remained fundamental to the early- and mid-nineteenth-century British perception of Britain and the rest of the British empire; indeed, the years 1857-1859 alone witnessed invocations of the Sublime to convey the uninhabitability of the prairie regions of present-day Canada and invocations of the Picturesque to promote the inhabitability and fecundity of the western parklands.

EN:

As more of her work becomes accessible to critical scrutiny, the image of Isabella Valancy Crawford as an angelic mendicant, a blessed gypsy of the Canadian woods and streams, or a naive, reclusive genius escaping from the difficulties of her life into a world of fantasy must yield place to a more accurate portrait of a tough-minded, conscious artist whose development as a poet reflects a working knowledge of the great tradition of the English lyric, an acquaintance with nineteenth-century chansons populaires, and familiarity with the masters of blank verse in English from Shakespeare through Browning. Moreover, her poems suggest that her reading included American poets such as Whitman, Poe, Longfellow, and, perhaps, Riley, the influence of whom she assimilated and transmuted into her own unique style. Crawford's verse exhibits a variety of tones, from witty Horatian satire to caustic irony and intensely evocative lyricism. In her longer narrative poems and dramatic monologues, she shows remarkable skill in blank verse, and her shorter newspaper verse displays a plethora of verse forms, ranging from paired amphibrachs to fourteeners.

EN:

Laura Salverson's autobiographical Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter is interesting not because she led an unusually interesting life but because, on top of her detailed snapshots of urban and pioneer scenery, three major motives for her writing can be identified. Her autobiography is in part an adequate and modest explanation of the background of The Viking Heart, her first novel. In addition, we also see Salverson's adjustment to two greatly different parents. As well, we notice her desire to present the Icelandic settlers to the English-Canadian community in such a way as to do away with the barriers of prejudice that surrounded all "foreign" or "alien" groups in the West. She certainly, as we can tell from her writing, felt that it was unfair of English-Canadians to look down upon Icelandic immigrants.

EN:

Green Water, Green Sky and "Its Image in the Mirror" illustrate forcefully two dominant technical elements in the predominantly modernist mode that persists in Gallant's fiction -- subtlety of imagery and narrative voice. The former contains the germ of much of her later writing, including the suggestive but unforced use of images that edge toward symbols but never become rigid or entirely predictable. In "Its Image in the Mirror," Gallant's typical subtlety and ambiguity, those qualities that give her stories their elusive quality, arise not so much out of the complexity and suggestiveness of the imagery, as in Green Water, Green Sky, as from the questionable authority of the narrative presence.

EN:

Together, the two essays "Sober Colouring: The Ontology of Super-Realism" and "Before the Flood" present a view of art that has shaped all of Hugh Hood's writing in varying degrees. In the two essays, Hood conveys his admiration for an art that exhibits the transcendental element dwelling in living things, for an art that is neither penned in itself as an image is ... nor ... hissing away into the invisible inane as symbols do, but emblematic, that is, as colourful as an image, and as full of meta-meaning as a symbol, indeed fuller because the implications of the symbol are so chillingly, so frustratingly imprecise. Quite early in his career, however, before the writing of these two essays, this theory was given a subtle, coherent, and comprehensive form of expression through the composition of Around the Mountain: Scenes from Montreal Life.

EN:

Throughout her work, Margaret Atwood uses literal and metaphoric camera images, including photographs, commercial and non-commercial art, movies, television programs, filmstrips, and mental pictures as symbols of seeing and being in the world. Her characters and personas often seem to view life through a celluloid film. Seeing themselves, the past, and other people as photograph trophies or the raw material for popular journalistic pieces on lifestyles, they fear the attack of camera-guns which turn them into products for consumption, and yet, paradoxically, they seek validation in being seen, trying to escape massive involvement by creating tourist-brochure realities. Bodily Harm, like the earlier work, presents a character who specializes in packaging experience for popular consumption. However, in the end, the camera images in this novel not only dramatize the fragmented self but also initiate the process of metamorphosis which seems to continue even beyond the frame of the book.

EN:

English-Canadian writers, publishers, and readers have tended to endorse without thinking racist practices and standards when it comes to Native Canadian writing. For Native Canadian writers themselves, the situation does not seem to be particularly encouraging. There are many new Native Canadian writers, but their voices go unheard, and their works are often unpublished or limited to a very small circulation. It is time to take notice, time to listen, to meet them as they have always been ready to meet us, to come out from behind the walls of stereotype and symbolism and acknowledge them for what they really are: real people, real writers.

EN:

Texte important dans la littérature québécoise, Poussière sur la ville d'André Langevin est un roman où la présence du corps et du geste est capitale. Les références à l'animalité que fait Langevin offrent plus qu'une description, surtout en ce qui a trait au personnage de Madeleine. Les descriptions animales symbolisent en même temps la liberté, la captivité et l'agressivité. Elles suggèrent aussi l'impuissance et une méthode de défense. Quoi qu'il en soit, Amprimoz affirme que ces références animales offrent aujourd'hui une connotation plus positive que lorsque le roman fut initialement publié en 1953. Selon lui, le roman constitue donc une remise en question de l'ange ainsi qu'une affirmation des valeurs positives de la bête.

EN:

The nature of French Canadian women has been examined by many scholars, their concern being more with the dire effect an omnipresent and omnipotent mother has had on the national psyche than with the women themselves. In Rosanna Leprohon's The Manor House of De Villerai, the mother figure, represented by only one unhappy mother and step-mother, is not central. The novel reflects the historical reality that women have played an autonomous role of considerable importance in the formation of our race, and that in this role they asserted themselves with an authority and independence that has profoundly marked our collective memory. The history of French Canada reveals admirable women surrounded by an aura of prestige and veneration heightened by the solitude of their vocations. Leprohon creates an independent heroine in the tradition of those admirable women of history.

EN:

Lampman's disturbing ambivalence toward nature in his early verse (Among the Millet) encouraged him to adopt the Emersonian identification of man and nature in Lyrics of Earth, but, once perceiving the inadequacy and dishonesty of this philosophical position, he turned away from it in order to look directly at the frightening realities of nature and human nature in Alcyone. This change in Lampman's visionary outlook can be traced in an examination of revisions he made on two important poems -- "Vision"/"Winter-Store" and "Peccavi, Domine" -- in his manuscript workbook and in printed text.

EN:

Recent studies have thrown up serious doubts about the length of Crawford's residence at 57 John Street, Toronto, and about her relationship with the owners of that residence, Charles Joseph Stuart and Henrietta Cruikshank Stuart. While friends, acquaintances, and family members have attested to a long association between Crawford and the Stuarts, the facts -- bills of sale, mortgage agreements, the Toronto City Directory, and rental records -- seem to contradict these reminiscences. However, a copy of Crawford's Old Spookses' Pass, inscribed by Crawford herself, proves a long friendship between herself and the Stuart family.

EN:

Early in 1955, Desmond Pacey and Irving Layton met in Montreal, and so began a long friendship and an invaluable correspondence documenting the development of Canadian poetry and criticism after World War II, as well as the development of a major critic and pre-eminent poet. The letters are rich in personal drama, recording the triumphs and setbacks of both men, the tensions in their friendships, their often conflicting views on poetry (especially Canadian poetry) and on the role of the poet and critic in contemporary society. There are discussions of literary figures past and present, heated arguments on current political and social happenings, an exchange of bawdy jokes, and some frank praises and criticisms of each other's work. The tone ranges from jocularity to bitter disappointment, from anger to tenderness, from weariness to excitement.

EN:

Cogswell talks about why he writes poetry; how his early reading influenced his life and work; the climate of the University of New Brunswick after World War II; the early years of The Fiddlehead; the poetic forms in which he is comfortable writing; the difficulty of communication -- getting across one's ideas -- in modern times; the effect the 1960s had on literature; the reality of death and its effect on his writing; the strengths and weaknesses of his own work; translation; which of his own books he values most; the effect criticism has upon him; the effects his personal relationships have had on his work; the state of contemporary literature versus that of the late 1940s and early 1950s; how well past Canadian poets will stand the test of time; the great need of Canadian literature; The Literary History of Canada; his most rewarding period at the University of New Brunswick; the present political and economic climate and its effect on publishing; and the university environment and its effect on his own work.