Genre, Trope, Gender: Essays by Northrop Frye, Linda Hutcheon, Shirley Neuman ed. by Barry Rutland, and: Northrop Frye: A Visionary Life by Joseph Adamson

Abstract

as belief in a woman’s power to change the world that threatens to confine her, then Anne Shirley and the books that tell her story convey a subtle but revolutionary feminism which has empowered generations of young girls” (163). Yet Berg is most comfortable with a bisexual reading of Anne’s imag­ ination, and insists on a shift away from an earlier argument such as Carol Gay’s (also included in this collection), that Anne’s perceptual apparatus is distinctly feminine. Berg reveals a Montgomery who seems to have “anticipated and revised” Freudian and Lacanian perspectives (161), and so presents us with a woman whom we are invited to read in terms current in recent years, and through whom we can read our own times: Montgomery insists on her place in a literary history that, as Gay says (101), has continued to ignore her. I have not mentioned the other fine essays in this wide-ranging collection (by Muriel Whitaker, Gillian Thomas, Perry Nodelman, Catherine Ross, Marilyn Solt, Mary Rubio, T.D. MacLulich), nor (at the end of this volume) Mavis Reimer’s very helpful surveys of early reviews, of contexts and history of reception, and of scholarship and criticism concerning Montgomery. paul tiessen / Wilfrid Laurier University Barry Rutland, ed., Genre, Trope, Gender: Essays by Northrop Frye, Linda Hutcheon, Shirley Neuman (Ottawa: Carleton University Press for the De­ partment of English, Carleton University, 1992). 90. $9.95 paper. Joseph Adamson, Northrop Frye: A Visionary Life (Toronto: ECW Press, 1993). 93. $14.95 paper. The revaluing of Northrop Frye continues both in works dedicated exclusively to him and in attempts to read him with other important figures inside and outside Canada. Both approaches can be fruitful, as is evidenced in the volumes under review here. Each in its own way sharpens our sense of Frye’s achievement and of how Canadian literary studies have changed in recent years. Munro Beattie was the founding chair of the English Department at Car­ leton University and a disciplinary and institutional builder who took ad­ vantage of a season of relative plenty in the mixed history of Canadian uni­ versities. His contributions to academic study of Canadian literature were important and enduring, and it is fitting that his accomplishments are re­ membered in an annual lecture series inaugurated by Eli Mandel in 1986 and featuring Paul Fussell and Claude Bissell before the three lecturers whose 359 work has been edited here by Barry Rutland. It is good to see an insti­ tution, university press, and department honour one of their own in this fashion, and equally gratifying that leading scholars choose to share in that endeavour. It is an effective way of keeping professional memory alive, and of formally encouraging reflection on the nature of continuity and change, which deserve more historical and analytical attention than they often re­ ceive. Barry Rutland’s Foreword is a welcome blend of information and analysis that goes some way toward fixing these three lectures as “points on the trajectory of theoretical development and critical application during the past thirty-five years” (2). In aligning Frye with genre, Hutcheon with trope, and Neuman with gender, Rutland encourages us to read these and other works by these authors with an eye to their common presumptions, distinctive allegiances and interests, and their exemplary force for Canadian scholars today. Rutland also points to the role of intellectual fashion in the attenuation of modern disciplinary memory. Frye knew how to respect the memory of his friends and colleagues, including Munro Beattie, and that ought still to be an important aspect of any politics of difference. The three lectures read well together, and could be usefully assigned to courses on Canadian Literature or Literary Theory. All three are written with lucidity and ease, and have lots to tell students about theory and crit­ icism as communicative acts. Who is the audience for academic writing? Why does it matter? Frye’s piece is perhaps more difficult to assess than the other two because he is speaking of mastery from a position of eminence re­ mote from recent connections of James to feminist and gay discourses and to the commodification of literary culture. However, Frye...