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The author urges the adoption of regional, national, and comparative approaches to Canadian literature in Canadian secondary schools. (AN)

Selected bibliography of French Canadian literary works intended primarily for teachers in Canadian bilingual schools. (RL)

This progress report of the curriculum development project aimed at the study of Canada's urban areas through examination of Canadian writings covers the project's first two years. The initial proposal and early planning is reported in ED 055 010. The primary difficulties, after the formation of the team, entailed acquiring release time, arranging a compatible schedule, coping with the demands of extra curricular assignments, finding workspace, and obtaining secretarial assistance and personnel willing to gather and annotate material. Valuable assistance was given by the professors and students in the University of Saskatchewan College of Education. A major factor contributing to the support received was the effort made on the part of the developers to present their project plans before groups of teachers and planners and to develop a set of transparencies for use by other Project Canada West teams. Two primary focuses emerged from the materials gathered: the physical aspect (the city itself, its structure, its form, its rigidity), and the human aspect (showing how man--who is changing, developing, and fluid--responds to the urban environment. Discussion of how best to utilize and evaluate the materials led the team to submit a proposal to the Board requesting that a special social studies class be offered in which the material could be used and student responses be measured. The proposal was approved and year III will be devoted to in-class curriculum development. (JMB)

Discussed are Canadian novels, short stories, poems and a film which revolve around man's confrontation with nature, the depression, the problem of isolation, realism in Canadian literature. (Author/AF)

My argument could not be more effectively summed up than in the words of Northrop Frye: It is obvious that Canadian literature, whatever its inherent merits, is an indispensable aid to the knowledge of Canada. It records what the Canadian imagination has reacted to, and it tells us things about this environment that nothing else will tell us." (Author)

The important aspect of a thematic approach is that it can link the literature with the society that produced it. It can help to foster a sense of place in students. It helps to isolate the basic myths which underlie the Canadian response to life. (Author)

A compilation of conference proceedings and addresses, in English and in French, of an August, 1967 meeting in Quebec, Canada is presented. Nelson Brooks offers the keynote speech on bilingualism today. Other speakers and topics include Guy Plastre on the conference theme, Ronald Sutherland on French and English-Canadian literature, Jean-Paul Vinay on the university role in developing Canadian bilinguals, F. Andre Paquette on teacher training, Jean Darbelnet on training translators and interpreters, and LeRoy James Benoit on language research preparation and the Modern Language Association's list of qualifications for secondary school language teachers. The proceedings report covers transcripts of the minutes, workshop sessions, discussions, and opening remarks on research and instructional methods. A list is given of participating institutions and delegates. (DS)

"Non-fiction" is an inelegant and unflattering description, invented no doubt by librarians, which is firmly established in Canadian usage. The literary journals of Great Britain and western Europe still attempt to be more discriminating. In their old-fashioned and pedantic way, they go on recognizing the separate categories of history, biography, politics, economics and world affairs; but in Canada these refined European distinctions are cheerfully disregarded. A survey of Canadian literature, by Canadians, normally begins with an article on Canadian poetry, which is followed immediately by an article on the Canadian novel; and then everything that is left over, philosophy, history, economics, as well as literary and art criticism, is swept summarily into a huge residual heap, labelled "remaining material." Poetry and fiction are, of course, "creative." But the claims of "remaining material" to this proud distinction are regarded, in Canada, as decidedly more dubious. A few small items in the vast, amorphous mass of "non-fiction" may be accepted as "creative," but only on the inflexibly enforced condition that they have not been written by members of universities. Works by members of universities are in all cases dismissed as "academic"; and in Canada, as in other parts of the English-speaking world, "academic" is very definitely a pejorative word.[...] It may be worth while to lift Canadian history and Canadian work in the social sciences out of the undifferentiated mass of "remaining material" for a brief inspection.

Let me begin by defining the scope of this article. It will be concerned not with all literary criticism produced in this country, but with Canadian criticism of Canadian literature. It is not intended to be a formal analysis and evaluation of contemporary critics, still less a history of the development of our criticism; it is an attempt to discover certain basic tendencies of Canadian literary criticism and to suggest possible explanations for them.

The pride in local colour that gripped Canadian literature early in the twentieth century squeezed the life out of fiction because the storytellers generally fumbled their technique. Almost every one of them ignored his artistic duty of trying to find a new technique appropriate to his primary interest. Thus the unquestioning reliance on traditional devices which has characterized all Canadian fiction until recently particularly enervated the local colourists. For the problem of integrating this new aspect of fiction into a unified story was one of technique, facing not only Canadians but all novelists who stressed setting or atmosphere as a chief aspect of their art. The problem was basic to the widening art of the novel. In all English fiction regional settings had been growing more prominent and more vivid during the late nineteenth century. Both for huge panoramas of society like Trollope's and George Eliot's and for restricted dramas of small groups like Meredith's, the background was ceasing to be nominal. The regional novel was about to emerge as a distinct type. The first group in the trend appeared in North America, and the Americans and Canadians were the first fully to encounter the special problems involved.

French-Canadian literature has been too frequently rejected as an uninspired mosaic of poems and novels grouped around Les Anciens Canadiens, L'Hiro n delle, Maria Chapdelaine, and The Golden Dog, better known as Le Chien d'or. As recently as 1936 A. R. M. Lower dismissed French-Canadian literature as “a matter of romantic novels, tepid poetry, or stylistic criticism.” Professor Felix Walter corrected this view with his observation that “from the turn of the century at any rate, French-Canadian novelists, poets, and critics have been marching steadily away from the ‘romantic’ the ‘tepid,’ and the ‘stylistic.*rsquo;” The point of view of the French-Canadian critics regarding their literature would find, I think, its most measured expression in Maurice Hébert. M. Hébert is of the opinion that, while in its ensemble French-Canadian literature merits respect, it is by no means transcendent. During the past ten years interesting works have appeared. Ringuet's Trente Arpents, for example, has achieved a considerable degree of popularity outside Canada. Publication in Paris gave the book the possibility of wide circulation. Ringuet, indeed, owes a debt of gratitude to the Quebec editors who took no interest in his novel. Robert Charbonneau believes, nevertheless, that there is as yet no artistic tradition in Canada: the writer who seeks perfection, he says, does so only because his self-respect demands it.

This article is essentially a record of the difficulty and embarrassment in selecting a title which would not presuppose too much or too little for the subject. In order to avoid duplication, an index of the specific field was consulted. which was found to contain such ominous captions as “Some Animadversions on Canadian Poetry;” “The Plight of the Poetic Craft in This Country;” “Pegasus in Need of the Spur;” “The Drift of Canadian Verse;” and other titles which prejudged the issue by innuendo in word and phrase. They savoured somewhat of the attitude of a critic who, his mind a blank on the subject, but at least technically complying with the needs of a curriculum, commenced his series of ten lectures with the announcement—“Canadian literature: it doesn't exist.”

If a choice had to be made of the year, more than any other, that marked a climax in the development of English-Canadian literature in the nineteenth century it would almost certainly be 1893, for it was then that five of Canada's most accomplished poets completed volumes of verse that reflected the maturing of their powers as creative artists. As we look back from the vantage-point of more than half a century upon the work of Roberts, Lampman, Carman, Scott, and Campbell, we can see that, although earlier writers had enjoyed some successes, the general level of the new work was higher than anything that had gone before. Throughout the eighties and early nineties the poets of the school of Roberts had been engaged in perfecting their craft, and with the possible exception of Scott, it is doubtful whether their work of later date ever much excelled the achievements of that climactic moment. Its significance did not entirely escape the notice of interested Canadians, although they were inclined to magnify it by making brash comparisons with what was being done across the border, where, it is true, a relative dearth had followed hard upon the brilliant expression of the New England genius.