WE DO NOT INTEND TO PROVIDE MODEL ANSWERS WITH THIS DOCUMENT,

BUT RATHER TO INDICATE A GOOD APPROACH TO EACH QUESTION AND

REFER YOU TO THE RELEVANT SECTIONS OF THE BASIC BIBLIOGRAPHY.
THERE IS A FAIRLY WIDE RANGE OF ACCEPTABLE RESPONSES.

Literatura Canadiense en Lengua Inglesa (Grado) 1ª P.P. (Febrero 2013) Modelo B

PART ONE

1.- Identify the text above, and discuss the main poetic principles of its author.

These four stanzas are the last quatrains of the satirical poem entitled “The Canadian
Authors Meet” (1927), written by F.R. Scott (1899-1995). It was originally published in
the McGill Fortnightly Review and then included in Scott’s first collection, Overture
(1945) and in The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, Invective, and Disrespectful
Verse, the collection that Scott and Smith edited in 1957. F.R. Scott was a member of
the Montreal Group, also called the McGill Movement, which rejected romanticism,
rebelled against conservatism, and campaigned for modernism in Canada. As the avant-
garde of their time, they brought about a revitalization of Canadian poetry with their
experiments in the use of innovative poetic forms. Scott strove for a radical
simplification of style, concentration and evocation. He often used free verse, employed
a new kind of imagery, avoided stereotyped phrases, and expanded the subject matter of
Canadian poetry well beyond the celebration of nature and other national themes
addressed by the Confederation Poets, who are explicitly named in line 10.

2.- What are the main stylistic features or rhetorical devices of this text?

The rhyme of these quatrains is abab, a regular scheme broken by the half-rhyme
“shall” and “fall” in lines 17 and 19. F.R. Scott’s poetry is colloquial and direct, and
“The Canadian Authors Meet” is no exception. Its vivid depiction of a literary tea-party
scene is typical of a writer who always intended to communicate effectively by means
of a strongly visual poetry. It also exemplifies to what extent Scott’s humor was his
major weapon as a social critic. This poem shows the influence of T.S. Eliot, with direct
allusions to the tea-party setting of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and to the
line “Here we go round the prickly pear” from “The Hollow Men” (inspired by the
English nursery rhyme “Here we go round the mulberry bush”). In lines 17-18 there is
also a mocking echo of the first line of a very popular American gospel hymn composed
by the Baptist preacher Robert Lowry (1826-1899): “Shall we gather at the river”
(1864). In lines 21-22 there is a striking pun (“O Canada, O Canada, Oh can / A day”)
that plays with the first words of “O Canada,” the song which would become the
national anthem of the country. There are examples of enjambment in lines 13-14, 17-
18, 18-19, 21-22, 22-23 and 23-24. The expression “a most delightful party” may be
interpreted as ironic.

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3.- How is the author’s ideological position defined through this text? Explain what
prompted the author to write it.

F.R. Scott was inspired by his visit to a meeting of the Canadian Authors’ Association,
which had been founded in 1921, as one of the many manifestations of the prevailing
nationalism of the twenties. This amusing indictment of the Canadian literary
establishment illustrates how F.R. Scott, being engaged in left-wing political activities
and sharing the typical counter-nationalist (rather than anti-nationalist) concerns of
many progressive intellectuals of his time, was asking Canadian writers to improve their
mediocre tastes, avoid provincialism and adopt a cosmopolitan perspective. He wanted
the poetry of his country to equal the best literature that was being written in the rest of
the English-speaking world.

4.- Discuss the text above as an example of satiric poetry.

F.R. Scott is mainly celebrated as a sharp satirist. In a letter of 1969, he observed:

“Don’t forget that satire, while seeming destructive, is really professing a faith in the
opposite of that which is being satirized.” Likewise, in a 1971 interview, he remarked:
“Don’t forget, when you satirize something you are contrasting the thing you satirize
with its opposite which you would like to have instead. So you’re really affirming the
opposite values to those you’re satirizing.” The main object of his satire in “The
Canadian Authors Meet” is the value system of the Confederation Poets (Bliss Carman,
Archibald Lampman, Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, and Duncan Campbell Scott), whose
“zeal for God and King” is ridiculed in line 12. As F.R. Scott’s sentiment toward
Canada was counter-nationalist, he derided with unsparing and acerbic wit the
optimistic patriotism of the Confederation Poets and also poked fun at the complacent
attitude of their admirers. Scott’s satire of this group of literati (a Latin word used in
line 14) is clearly conveyed in lines 17-20, a stanza focusing on four alternative courses
of action that the participants at the meeting of the Canadian Authors’ Association may
consider as their next activity: 1) singing an English nursery rhyme, 2) singing an
American religious hymn, 3) appointing a Poet Laureate, or 4) having another cup of
tea.

PART TWO

1. Discuss the choice of imagery in the works of Livesay, Page and Purdy.

Imagery can be defined as the use of a consistent pattern or collection of related images.
Although visual imagery is the most frequent type found in poetry, imagery is not only
visual, since it includes any figurative or literal language that appeals to any of the senses,
not only to that of seeing. For instance, auditory or acoustic imagery represents sounds.
Fusing different images in unexpected ways was an important aspect in the
development of the creative process of Dorothy Livesay, P.K. Page and Al Purdy. All
three employed the various kinds of imagery they considered appropriate to express
their emotions and deal with their personal, social or political concerns.

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 The simple and direct poems of Dorothy Livesay’s first collection, Green
Pitcher (1928), were written under the influence of French symbolism and in the
imagist style of H.D., whose work she had closely studied. Included in Livesay’s second
book, which was entitled Signpost (1932), the sharply clear lyric “Green Rain” shows
an increasing sophistication of the author’s imagist skills. The speaker of “Green Rain”
remembers the spring rain, “green from the half-green of the spring trees,” and
associates this memory with that of her grandmother’s shawl, while also nostalgically
evoking how the sound of the rain and the wind intermingled with that of her
grandmother’s voice.

The juxtaposed acoustic and visual images of Livesay’s documentary poem

“Day and Night” (1935) are related to the violent force of the noisy machines in the
steel factories where workers contributed to the wartime industry of the mid-thirties. In
her essay “Machine-Age Discourse, Mechanical Ballet, and Popular Song as Alternative
Document in Dorothy Livesay’s ‘Day and Night,’” Brenda Carr Vellino has observed
about the imagery of this poem: “Livesay’s evocation of machine-age iconography and
acoustics through recurring imagery of gears, wheels, levers, fire, screams and whistles,
‘smashing rhythms’ and ‘roaring voices,’ along with the driving pace of alternating
iambic and dactylic sections of the poem, is most notable for its kinetic force, which
conveys the intense physical impact of the industrial machine on the human body.” 1

In the forties P.K. Page settled in Montreal, where she was associated with the
Preview group of writers, led by Patrick Anderson, whose density of imagery had a
deep impact on her work. The strongly and sharply visual nature of P.K. Page’s poetry
can be connected to her paintings and her intricate pen-and-ink drawings, which she
signed under her married name of P.K. Irwin. Her poem “Stories of Snow,” a poignant
depiction of the Canadian winter landscape, has been widely praised for its visual
precision and sight-related rich imagery, which emphasizes whiteness. According to
Jane Swann, “The poet’s ease with images blurs the boundaries of sense perceptions in
this poem. White linen in tropical countries is dreamed into Dutch snow drifts, and in
this mysterious land of snow, white feathers become frozen ‘plumes’ (22) of breath in
air. One image generates the next in rapid succession. Even a dead swan’s ‘plummet’
(34) becomes beautiful and the dead swan’s down is ‘deep as a drift’ (39), as sensory
perception likewise transforms its body into a ‘warm metamorphosis of snow’ (41),
having fallen from the sky like snowflakes, an image which runs next into the
woodsmen, who likewise ‘fall at last’ (43) and ‘dream their way to death’ (44).” 2 Visual
images are also used in “Arras,” a poem about eyes, seeing, and unseeing. Constance
Rooke has defined it as “an awesome visionary poem,” about which she remarked: “The
poet’s everyday frustration with unseeing others becomes in the dream world of ‘Arras’
frustration at her own limited capacity for vision, which she projects on ‘those figures’
so that they become as heartless and unseeing as the pretentious hosts of a garden
party.” 3

1
“Machine-Age Discourse, Mechanical Ballet, and Popular Song as Alternative Document in
Dorothy Livesay’s ‘Day and Night.’” Studies in Canadian Literature 32.2 (2007): 46.
2
“Mapping the Mind’s ‘I’: Vision, Perception, and Complicity in the Early Poems of P.K.
Page.” Studies in Canadian Literature 30.1 (2005):189.
3
“Approaching P.K. Page’s ‘Arras.’” Canadian Poetry 4 (Spring/Summer 1979): 65.

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 Al Purdy uses spatial images to describe the landscape of “The Country North of
Belleville” and “Wilderness Gothic,” a contradictory landscape which gives both a
sense of beauty and one of defeat. “The Country North of Belleville” presents images of
uninhabited ruined farmsteads and abandoned spaces as markers of decay. “Wilderness
Gothic” draws images from the Bible, Durer’s art, and Canadian pioneer memoirs to
depict a workman sheathing the church spire with new metal as if he were “hammering
in the sky” while surrounded by yellowing fields. Such a pretty scene is juxtaposed with
the bleak images (“the dinner cold and new-baked bread a failure”) of the daily life of
the workman, who has no sick benefits on his non-union job and whose “house creaks a
little” (line 34). This juxtaposition provokes an ominous effect which is reinforced by
the poem’s last line: “Perhaps he will fall.”

2. Discuss characterization in the short stories written by Margaret Laurence,

Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, and Margaret Atwood.

Characterization can be defined as the delineation or development of the

characters’ personalities in any given work of fiction. Although these four authors are not
generally labeled as “realist” (except for “super-realist,” “neo-realist,” or “hyper-realist”
Munro), all of them use the typical forms of characterization employed in realistic fiction
while going beyond its conventions. In fact, psychological realism in the manner of
Marcel Proust is one of the main features of Gallant’s highly polished stories. Laurence,
Gallant, Munro and Atwood invariably strive for verisimilitude or plausibility while
attempting to render reality in accurate detail, with a strong emphasis on the truthful
representation of the actual. Their complex forms of characterization avoid stereotyping,
and provide excellent representations of the distinctive psychological traits of the people
portrayed. Many of their characters are Canadian girls or women who underscore their
female perspectives as they rebel against the gender roles imposed by the constricting
society of their home country.

My comments on characterization will be mainly focused on the first-person

narrators and protagonists of the four short stories included in our course, whose
compelling narrative voices are clearly heard. Laurence addresses the issues of female
artistry and motherhood through the character of Vanessa MacLeod, a ten-year-old girl
who wants to be a writer. In “To Set Our House in Order,” a highly autobiographical
short story, Vanessa has her first intimation of mortality when she realizes that her
mother may die in childbirth, and she begins to learn about how to cope with grief by
observing how her paternal grandmother has reacted to the death of Uncle Frederick.
Apart from Vanessa, the other main character carefully depicted is Grandmother
MacLeod, an unfriendly old woman who is shut away with the memories of her dead
son, thinks of herself as a lady, imposes the traditional British lifestyle on her Canadian
family, and keeps “straight and poised” when confronted with an emergency, because
she does “not believe in the existence of fear.” She is perceived as an authoritative and
imposing figure by Vanessa, whereas Aunt Edna (the kind and sympathetic sister of
Vanessa’s mother) makes fun of her rigid behavior and her unjustified feelings of
superiority.

Linnet Muir, the reminiscent first-person narrator of “Varieties of Exile,” is

equally determined to turn life into literature. She is Gallant’s best-known and most

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closely autobiographical character, a fictional projection of the author, who also tries to
decode her experience by writing about the refugees and expatriates she meets in her
hometown, feeling as estranged in her own country as they do in their land of adoption.
Young Linnet focuses her attention on Frank Cairns, whom she describes as one of the
typical “remittance men” who have disgraced their families and receive a lifetime
income or allowance provided that they keep out of England.

Munro’s interest in women’s experiences, with a clear emphasis on girlhood and

adolescence, informs her accurate portrayal of female characters. Fame (who had been
named Euphemia after her mother’s mother), the self-conscious narrator of “The
Progress of Love,” is portrayed as neither detached nor objective, because she tends to
reshape events and distort reality when she gives an account of her mother’s life in an
attempt to understand it. Fame describes her mother, Marietta, as a very pious woman,
“full of energy and expectation,” but traumatized for years because she believed that her
mother (Fame’s grandmother) had tried to commit suicide. On the contrary, Marietta’s
sister, Beryl, interpreted the same event just as a prank, and thus remained unaffected by
it. Marietta and Beryl, who had been separated and raised apart when they were
children, are two contrasting characters in this short story. What these two sisters did
with the money they inherited from their father shows how different they are: Beryl
invested her part in real estate, whereas Marietta burned it up in the stove, out of hatred
for her father. Fame depicts her father as “an Anglican, an Orangeman, a Conservative”
and a sociable and very polite man who took his wife’s death hard, but does not give a
definitive version of his attitude to his wife’s decision to feed the money into the
flames. Did he allow his wife to burn it, or did he learn about what she had done when it
was too late to prevent her from doing so?

Jane, the protagonist of “The Age of Lead,” is a middle-aged woman who

reviews her whole existence, prompted by a television documentary on the discovery
and exhumation of the corpse of an Arctic explorer and by her memories of recently
dead Vincent, a childhood friend whom she never married, but who has been the single
most significant person in her life. It is discovered that the man excavated from the ice,
John Torrington, and his companions on the Franklin Expedition had died of lead
poisoning (from the lead used to seal the tins of canned food), but the disease that has
caused Vincent’s death at the age of 42 remains a mystery. Compared with carefully
portrayed Jane, whose feelings are revealed, Vincent is a minor character, depicted in
less detail.

3. Discuss to what extent Joy Kogawa and Rohinton Mistry were inspired by
their ethnic backgrounds when they wrote their works of fiction.

Joy Kogawa and Rohinton Mistry illustrate how ethnic diversity has produced multiple
forms of Canadian fiction since the last decades of the twentieth century. They have
articulated the concept of ethnicity and their imaginative quest for personal and
communal identity in different ways. Their familial and cultural roots are reflected in
their extremely powerful texts, which deal with issues of history, language, race,
gender, class, hybridity, assimilation, political resistance, displacement, exile, and
cultural exchange. The two writers were inspired by their personal experiences of
migration, within Canada in the case of Kogawa, and into Canada in Mistry’s case).

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From a between-worlds position, both writers have explored various aspects of the
cross-cultural realities concerning Canadians of Asian background, Kogawa as a
Canadian-born woman who focused on her Japanese heritage, and Mistry as an
immigrant who drew attention to his South-Asian origins.

A second generation Japanese Canadian (Nisei) and the daughter of a minister of

the Anglican Church, Joy Kogawa was born and raised in Canada as a devout Christian.
In 1942, during the Second World War, she and her family were abruptly relocated from
her native Vancouver, first to the ghost town of Slocan, in the interior of British
Columbia. Then, in 1945, when all Japanese Canadians were ordered to re-settle east of
the Rockies, she endured a second exile because she had to move again from British
Columbia into Coaldale (Alberta). She is mainly known as the author of Obasan, a
novel about the enforced evacuation from the Pacific Coast and the dispersal of
Japanese Canadians. Kogawa achieved great ideological ascendancy through her art
because her first novel provided a “catalyst” or a “powerful literary lever” for the Japanese
Canadians who, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, were attempting to obtain an official
apology and some redress. Obasan was instrumental in influencing the Canadian
Government’s 1988 acknowledgement of genuine regret on behalf of all Canadians for the
loss of liberty and property that more than 21,000 Japanese Canadians had suffered, in
spite of the fact that no one had been charged with treason. In this novel, Kogawa
reinterprets and corrects official versions of history. She tries to set the record straight by
revealing what really happened. But Obasan is not a political tract written by a member of
an ethnic minority seeking justice. Far from claiming absolute truth for one particular
vision or giving a single one-dimensional perspective, Kogawa includes multiple points of
view and juxtaposes voices, thus enriching the novel with a polyphonic quality that
captivates readers. Naomi Nakane, the protagonist of the short story “Obasan” which
Kogawa later rewrote as chapter three of her novel of the same title, tries to confront her
past through reminiscence, by pondering the painful memories of her exile and by
reflecting on how her own family suffered the effects of the unjust treatment to which
Japanese Canadians were submitted during and after World War II.

Rohinton Mistry, a Parsi Zoroastrian, is one of the writers of the Indian

Diaspora. He was born in Bombay and emigrated to Toronto, where he won a number
of literary awards. Such a Long Journey, his widely acclaimed first novel, evokes the
customs of the middle-class Parsi community of Bombay in the 1970s through the lives
of Gustad Noble and his family. Although Mistry claims that Parsi identity is not the
central focus of his writing, in fact much of his fiction deals with the assertion of this
identity and the will to record the ways of life of a dwindling community which may
fade into oblivion due to demographic decline. In Such a Long Journey Mistry emerges
as a realist with a well-wrought plot based on personal observations and with a language
that constitutes a fine specimen of Indian English, interspersed with Hindi words and
literal translations of Hindi phrases. The author incorporates myths from Persian,
Hindu, Greek and Christian sources. A Fine Balance studies human relationships in a
world permeated by cruel violence. It reveals the social and historical developments of
India by focusing on how the state of Emergency intrudes into the lives of four
characters in the mid-1970s and leads to their eventual destruction. This novel draws
upon the traditional art of Indian narrative fiction, introducing characters and linking
them together into a stream of stories. In Family Matters the private and public worlds
are linked again, because the novel depicts a Parsi family torn apart in the politically
corrupt Bombay of the 1990s.

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 “Swimming Lessons” is the last of the eleven stories included in the collection
Tales from Firozsha Baag and the only one set primarily in Canada, though it also
contains shifts to India, where the narrator’s parents read and comment on the text
which their son has recently written in Toronto. The unnamed narrator is presumably
Kersi, the narrator of a previous story, “Lend Me Your Light,” a writer engaged in
defining his own hybridity, like Mistry. The fact that “Swimming Lessons” is written in
two types of print is an integral part of its narrative technique, for it indicates the
shifting of point of view, an uncommon feature in Mistry’s fiction. Firozsha Baag is an
apartment building in Bombay which is inhabited by middle-class Parsi families. India-
Bombay-Firozsha Baag are juxtaposed with the Canadian experience. The initial failure
of the protagonist to master both the Chowpatty Beach waters in Bombay and the
swimming pool water in Canada symbolizes his failure to assimilate into either society.
However, by the end of the story, when he reopens his eyes under the water of his bath-
tub, he feels reborn, for he sees life in the dual perspective of the Eastern and Western
worlds.