Canadian Odyssey: A Reading of Hugh Hood's «The New Age/Le nouveau siècle»

Thomas M.F. Gerry is a professor of English at Laurentian University and
the editor of Arachne, Laurentian University’s bilingual
interdisciplinary journal of language and literature.

W.J. Keith describes Hugh Hood’s The New Age/Le nouveau siиcle as
“a major achievement in Canadian literature, and even a substantial
contribution to the art of fiction in the English-speaking world.”
This literary judgment and others articulated in Canadian Odyssey are
grounded in the author’s broadly based knowledge not only of Canadian
literature, but also of world literatures and literary studies. The New
Age/Le nouveau siиcle is a 12-novel series in the “roman-fleuve”
(river novel) tradition of such works as John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte
Saga, Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, Marcel Proust’s
In Search of Lost Time, and James Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s
Wake. Keith deftly reveals the roles of this epic fiction tradition in
Hood’s substantially imagined treatment of the experiences of a
Canadian family in the 20th century. He discusses each of the 12 novels
both as individual works and as elements of Hood’s larger design. For
those daunted by the prospect of reading a 12-novel series, Canadian
Odyssey offers welcome assistance.