The Picturesque and the Sublime: A Poetics of the Canadian Landscape

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

This book is best approached not as an extended argument (significantly,
the individual sections are not numbered), but as a series of
interrelating essays that discuss the traditional foundations of
Canadian landscape poetry and analyze specimens of the art.

In addition, Glickman challenges most earlier criticism on her subject,
especially that influenced by Northrop Frye and Margaret Atwood. She
courageously questions Frye’s idea of the “garrison mentality” and
the traditional Canadian response to nature and the wilderness as one of
“terror.” She also attacks Canadian nationalists who exaggerate the
importance of native themes, as well as those who display anything less
than enthusiasm for much early Canadian writing.

Such challenges are healthy, and her arguments should be taken
seriously. By the same token, however, I have reservations about aspects
of Glickman’s own position. She tends to overestimate the contemporary
importance of work that she finds historically interesting. Thus her
discussion of Susanna Moodie’s neglected poem “Enthusiasm” is
excellent, and it throws valuable light on the artistic complexities of
Roughing It in the Bush. But the poem itself remains of interest only to
literary historians; it no more belongs in the canon of essential
Canadian literature than does John Byron’s poem of the same title
(cited here as an analogue). Similarly, I am unimpressed with Constance
Lindsay Skinner’s “Song of Cradle-Making” (where Glickman finds
powerful “authenticity of feeling”), not because “the modern
aesthetic of ‘masculine’ irony ... condemns domestic writing as
inherently sentimental” but because this particular specimen seems to
me poorly written.

In consequence, I accept many of Glickman’s points and see them as
relevant to literary history but not as significantly altering the map
of what we consider our permanent literary heritage. I “understand”
such works as J. Mackay’s “Quebec Hill” or Pauline Jiles’s
“Song of the Rising Sun” the better for having read Glickman, but my
critical evaluation of the poems is hardly affected. Still, this is a
thoughtful book, to be read thoughtfully.