Aboriginal Arts & Stories

Fifth Business, novel by Robertson Davies (New York and Toronto, 1970; London, 1971).

This was supposed to come from the horse's mouth. It was all lined up, a rare interview with old crazy horse himself.

They write about anything and everything. A Parisian cop and his unlikely Gestapo partner in occupied France. Magical swords in a parallel Tudor kingdom. Tempestuous Regency heroines. Quiet Christian prayer. Guides to fantasy realms.

Bear, by Marian Engel (Toronto, 1976), winner of the Governor-General's Award, has been called the most controversial novel ever written in Canada because of its heroine's erotic relationship with a bear.

Canada has inspired a substantial literary response from foreign as well as native-born and resident authors.

Until the arrival of Haitians fleeing the Duvalier regime, the majority of francophones writing about Canada were from France. Even in the 17th century, there were occasional references to New France in literature by authors acquainted with travellers or their writings.

In colonies, the literary tradition of the mother country normally prevails. This was true in Canada, where it has taken English-speaking Canadians a long time to accept their own literature as a legitimate subject for study.

Les Soirées canadiennes was a magazine founded in 1861 by H.R. CASGRAIN, A. GÉRIN-LAJOIE, F.A.H. LaRue and J.C. Taché, which published assorted "collection[s] of national literature" in monthly instalments.

A collection of essays by Northrop Frye, written between 1943 and 1969, published in 1971, on Canadian literature and painting.

La Relève was a monthly magazine founded in 1934 in Montréal by Paul Beaulieu, Robert CHARBONNEAU, Jean Le Moyne and Claude Hurtubise. The magazine published 103 issues before its demise in 1948, the first 48 as La Relève and the rest as La Nouvelle Relève.

Les Insolences du Frère Untel (1960), by Jean-Paul DESBIENS (published anonymously), is an eloquent plea for educational reform couched in a whimsical, occasionally irreverent but always incisive style.

In Search of Myself, by Frederick Philip Grove (1946; repr 1974), in part a sequel to Grove's A Search for America (1927), was ostensibly autobiographical, but the self Grove sought was a complicated one.

Influence d'un livre, L' (1837) by Philippe AUBERT DE GASPÉ, Jr, regarded as the first French Canadian novel, offers a subtle satire of spiritual poverty in Québec through an account of Charles Amand's quest for gold.

Humorous writing, like humour itself, can be subjective, subtle and difficult to define. Emerging from the marriage of specific social, historical and cultural forces, it also reflects the vagaries of fashion and popular taste.

Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place, by Malcolm Lowry (1961), and published posthumously, won the 1961 Governor General's Award.

Histoire du Canada depuis sa découverte jusqu'à nos jours, a Canadian classic by François-Xavier GARNEAU, appeared in 4 volumes from 1845-52, tracing French Canada's development from Champlain's voyages of discovery to 1840.

The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographical Man, by Marshall McLuhan (Toronto 1962), is a brilliantly eclectic analysis in which McLuhan claims that print technology has modified the form of our perception, shifting and concentrating perceptual emphasis from the ear to the eye, with tremendous consequences for individuals and cultures.

Fruits of the Earth, a novel by Frederick Philip Grove, was published 1933 in Toronto.

The response to the First World War in Canadian literature, while seemingly uniform on the surface, is in reality far more varied and complex.

In the 19th century, Canada relied mainly on foreign imports for its literary scholarship, and early attempts to provide native periodicals aiming at more than a merely popular standard were generally short-lived.

Klee Wyck, collection of literary sketches by Emily Carr (Toronto 1941). Klee Wyck - the Indian name given Carr, meaning "Laughing One" - is an evocative work that describes in arrestingly vivid detail the central influence on Carr of Northwest Coast Indian life.

See POPULAR LITERATURE.

A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship major literary characters, [including] the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark.