The Proceedings of the Sir Charles G.D. Roberts Symposium, Mount Allison University

Terry Goldie is an associate professor of English at York University and
author of Fear and Temptation.

Charles G.D. Roberts was probably the first Canadian to become famous because of his contribution to Canadian literature and no doubt the only one to be knighted for that reason. Thus the results of a symposium on his works ought to be a worthy addition to Canadian scholarship. Ought to be. There is nothing overtly wrong with this collection. And sometimes there is a lot right with it. D.M.R. Bentley’s analysis of Roberts’ Tantramar poems is a model of explication and of lucid prose. John Moss’s comments on Roberts’ narrative technique and Fred Cogswell’s observations on Roberts’ life are sensible and even trenchant. While he offers more than he gives, Joseph Gold glimpses some nice insights into the psychology of the animal stories: the psychology of the animals, of the author, and of the age for which they were written.

But almost nothing in this volume that is worth saying has not been said elsewhere, in reasonably accessible places. Cogswell’s comments are an admitted abridgment of his piece in volume two of Canadian Writers and Their Works (Toronto: ECW Press, 1983) and the Graham Adams contribution in more or less an overview of his edition of the Complete Poems of Charles G.D. Roberts (Wolfville, N.S.: Wombat Press, 1985).

There is a general feeling throughout of “rehashing.” And far too much concern with evaluation. Leave this disreputable waffling task to people like book reviewers, who have to do it. I personally am completely sick of subjective discussion in literary criticism of how good or bad such and such a poem is. Why can’t we just say that whether or not we like him, Roberts is a clearly established part of the Canadian literary landscape, as much as Whitman is in the American? If that attitude had been taken by the organizers and participants, we might have more of the useful dissection provided by Bentley.