Canada's Forgotten Poets: Values in Early Twentieth-Century Canadian Poetry in English

Abstract

<p>Early twentieth-century Canadian poetry has largely been ignored by critics and scholars of Canadian literature. The thesis serves to rectify this omission by concentrating on the values of this poetry, since the period has been neglected due to a negative evaluation of the poetry by the generation of poets who immediately followed those who came to artistic maturity between 1900 and 1936. Rather than imposing yet another evaluation on the period, however, I ask what values early twentieth-century poets chose to express in their verse. From this starting-point, I went on to develop a model of poetic value pertaining to the period in question.</p> <p>In this first, introductory chapter I discuss values in poetry in general terms, explain the nature of the negative evaluation of the period by reference to critical statements made by A. J. M. Smith and others and conclude with a description of intellectual and social values as they were understood at the time. Chapter Two concerns the verse of Tom MacInnes, Wilson MacDonald, Audrey Brown, G. H. Clarke and Arthur Stringer. Chapter Three is devoted to the work of Marjorie Pickthall and W. W. E. Ross. In chapters two and three I am chiefly concerned with the poetic value of beauty as it is expressed in the poetry. Chapter Four treats the value of prophetic truth as this value emerges in the poetry of F.O. Call, Arthur Bourinot, A.M. Stephen and the poetic and critical writings of Raymond Knister. In the final chapter I discuss a conflict between the values of beauty, truth and order as this conflict appears in the Canadian odes of the time, in a number of highly structured and unusual books of poetry and in the religious poetry of the Reverend Robert Norwood. Chapter Five concludes with a discussion of E. J. Pratt's poetry, in which I maintain that the conflict in values is inevitably resolved in a poetry of order.</p> <p>In addressing the values of poetry as they were expressed in Canadian poetry in English in the first decades of the century, I render the poetry accessible to contemporary reassessment and re-evaluation. The thesis not only treats a period of literary activity that has been neglected for too long, but also brings forward the question of values in literature and in life.</p>