Canadian Writers and Their Works: Fiction Series, Vol. 4

R.G. Moyles is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.

This is the fourth volume of a proposed 20-volume “collection of
critical essays covering the development of Canadian fiction and poetry
over the past two centuries.” Each essay is written to a formula that
includes, in this order, “Biography,” “Tradition and Milieu,”
“Critical Overview,” and a discussion of the author’s “Works.”
Each essay, by an established scholar, is between 50 and 70 pages long.

Given the fact that formula, and a predetermined length, often inhibit
scholarly innovation, it is noteworthy that each of the essays here
bears the imprint of its author and each offers a unique view of its
subject. W.J. Keith, on Frederick Philip Grove, offers a sound thematic
and stylistic analysis of “Canada’s first important novelist,” to
be valued for his “remarkable structural imagination . . . sheer
critical brilliance, [and an] enviable steadiness and sincerity of
purpose.” Joy Kuropatwa is concerned to explain and exemplify Raymond
Knister’s sense of “experienced reality” and how it is best
presented in his novels. Dick Harrison concentrates on W.O. Mitchell’s
“world vision” and finds that “the fallen state of humanity is a
quality of everyday existence” that Mitchell “presents with evident
conviction.” Stanley Atherton emphasizes “the bitter conflicts
between individual characters” in his analysis of Martha Ostenso,
suggesting that such conflicts “provide the dynamics of her plots.”
And finally, in one of the most engaging and most intimate essays in the
volume, Morton Ross illuminates the genius of Sinclair Ross and provides
an excellent corrective to all the unsatisfactory discussion about the
narrative voice in As For Me and My House. All in all, there is much to
be thankful for here: no essay is overburdened with critical jargon, all
offer astute original insights, and all are intrinsically worth reading.