The Beginnings Of A National Literary Tradition

The Beginnings Of A National Literary Tradition Essay, Research Paper Canadians throughout their history have been concerned over the status of their national literature. One of the major problems facing early Canadian writers was that the language and poetic conventions that they had inherited from the Old World were inadequate for the new scenery and conditions in which they now found themselves. Writers such as Susanna Moodie, Samuel Hearne, and Oliver Goldsmith were what I would consider “Immigrant” authors. Even though they were writing in Canada about Canada their style and their audiences were primarily England and Europe. These authors wrote from an Old World perspective and therefore were not truly Canadian authors. It took a group of homespun young writers in

the later part of the 19thCentury to begin to build a genuine “discipline” of Canadian literary thought. This group, affectionately known as ‘The Confederation Poets’, consisted of four main authors: Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Archibald Lampman. The Poets of Confederation “established what can legitimately be called the first distinct “school” of Canadian poetry”(17, Keith). The term ‘The Poets of Confederation’ is a misnomer since not one of these poets/authors was more than ten years old when the Dominion of Canada was formed in 1867. However, all of these writers were aware of the lack of a distinctive Canadian literary tradition and they made efforts to create one for their successors. While each of these men had their

own distinctive writing style they all sought to contribute and create a ‘national’ literature. According to R.E.Rashley in Poetry in Canada: The First Three Steps ” there is no Canadian poetry before [The Confederation Poets] time”(98). These men were the first in a long line of authors and artists to conceive of the need for a discernible national literature. The Confederation Poets function was to “explore the new knowledge that they had acquired of themselves that had been created by the interaction of environment and people and the concept of evolutionary growth”(Rashley 98). Archibald Lampman was a key note in the beginnings of a national literary movement. Before Lampman and the other Confederation poets there seemed to be a mere repetition of European ideas in

literature in Canada. Even though Lampman was influenced by the great Romanticists in Britain, such as Keats and Wordsworth, he is still one of the most integral writers in Canadian poetry and literature in general. Lampman signaled the move from the ‘Immigrant’ authors like Moodie and her counterparts toward a true and distinct Canadian literary movement. It is important to note that in order to appreciate the quality of 19th Century Canadian literature, an effort of sympathy and a leap of imagination are both needed because it is here in the 19th Century that our nations true poetic history begins. In early Canadian poetry the most influential and universal poet is undoubtedly Archibald Lampman. While his career, like his life, were short-lived his poetry remains as a

reminder to the origins of Canadian literary thought. Lampman was one of our first major literary figures to try and identify a “national” literature. He realized the importance of having a specifically Canadian literary tradition. An important stepping point in Lampman’s career came after he read the work Orion by Charles G.D. Roberts. Lampman describes his over powering emotion when as a youth he came across this published work(in the quote on the title page). The importance of having this distinct literary “school” was a driving inspiration in his art. Lampman is regarded “as the most talented of The Confederation Poets”( W.J. Keith 18). It is amazing that this unspectacular man could have such a profound effect on the evolution of Canadian literary tradition.