“Canadian Angles of Vision”: Northrop Frye and the Literary History of Canada

Abstract

“CANADIAN ANGLES OF VISION” : NORTHROP FRYE AND THE LITERARY HISTORY OF CANADA S A N D R A D JW A Simon Fraser University [The Literary History of Canada is] what the title implies. Despite its disageeable habit of wondering why nothing it examines is the Canadian Moby Dick, it’s useful if you want to know who wrote what when. Margaret Atwood: Survival: A Thematic Guide to Cana­ dian Literature (1972) A l t h o u g h Northrop Frye is listed as one of the six editors of the Lit­ erary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English (1965), it is not generally recognized that he was one of the two principal editors and, in the largest sense, the catalyst for the volume. From interviews made in the late seventies and from Carl Klinck’s reminiscences, Giving Canada a Literary History: A Memoir (1991), we discover that the literary history came into being as a result of a chance meeting between Frye and Klinck in Septem­ ber 1956. Klinck’s letters on the development of the Literary History from its first beginnings to publication in 1965 (2nd ed. 1976) demonstrate that Frye’s function was primarily that of a co-editor, albeit largely behind the scenes. He advised Klinck on the financing and organizing of the project, on the selecting of contributors, on the structuring of the book, and on the copy editing of the completed text (“I dislike very much the style of the mass obituary, the use of the smarmy adverb. I dislike having a man four feet ten inches in height described as a ‘towering figure’ ” [Memoir 124]). Moreover, Klinck’s papers and remarks made at the University of Leeds in 1965 demonstrate that he relied on the broad application of some of Frye’s critical concepts to justify the editorial practices of the Literary History. Finally, Frye was assigned one of the most important tasks of a principal editor or co-editor, that of writing a summarizing Conclusion for the first and second editions of the book. The immediate impetus for the Literary History of Canada was a wideranging paper “Lexis and Melos,” exploring similarities between music and poetry, given by Frye at a morning session of the English Institute at Colum­ bia University in September 1956. Klinck recalls that he was “overwhelmed by the critical acumen shown by Frye” 1 and that the two men had a brief E n g l is h S t u d i e s in C a n a d a , 19, 2, June 1993 but significant conversation as they entered for the afternoon session. “I asked him whether Canadian literature could be tested against international standards. Norrie replied, in effect, ‘of course, why not?’ He added, ‘first of all there must be a great deal of research in basic facts’ ” (Memoir 103). Klinck amplified in a taped interview with me in 1979: “I asked Northrop Frye whether Canadian literature could stand up respectably if it were sub­ jected to a historical and critical survey? He agreed that the attempt should be made to obtain a good basis of fact and on that build a critical appre­ ciation. We agreed on taking this step, we sold the idea to the University of Toronto Press and organized a board of editors shortly thereafter.” 2 The pronoun “we,” used by Klinck throughout this discussion, indicates that he saw the development of the Literary History as a joint endeavour by Frye and himself. Klinck’s conviction, reflected in his reminiscences, was that primary re­ search in all historical periods was the first requirement for a literary history of Canada. He also believed that this research should be undertaken by a team of scholars along the lines of those assembed for the pioneering Liter­ ary History of the United States (1946) edited by Robert E. Spiller, Willard Thorp, et al. In his first handwritten notes on the subject (autumn 1956) he listed a number of significant differences between the American and Cana­ dian literary experience: a closer relationship with Great Britain, a colonial period reaching to a later date, a significant relation to the United States, a division into...