ABSTRACT
FRYE’s retrospective collection of essays represents a turning-point in Canada’s criticism of its own literature, in that it places all the writing it considers in a historical perspective, and also views it as part of the larger story of “the Canadian imagination”. Defining this national imagination was a major project of the years surrounding the confederation centenary, and Frye did much to establish the terms of the debate. His notion of Canada as “practically the only country left in the world which is a pure colony”, imaginatively characterized by a “garrison mentality”, remained influential into the 1980s. The most useful section contains Frye’s annual surveys of poetic production in Canada, published in the University of Toronto Quarterly during the 1950s. Although he avoided evaluative judgments, Frye conveyed a sure sense of what was significant and what was peripheral. The reader of this section obtains a good sense of what characterized emerging modernism in Canada, and who were its most significant practitioners. The other notable item of the collection is Frye’s essay concluding the Literary History of Canada (1965, edited by Carl F. Klinck), in which he engages with the relation of Canadian culture to the country’s history and geography. He deals with issues of identity and unity, fleshing out his conception of Canada as garrison, and placing emphasis on literature as regional and structurally mythopoeic. Frye’s study remains a useful starting-point for investigating Canadian literature from modernist and postmodern perspectives.
