Canadian Poets

As one of the formative periods in Canadian history, the late nineteenth century witnessed the birth of a nation, a people, and a literature. In this study of Canada's first 'school' of poets, D.M.R. Bentley combines archival work, including extensive research in periodicals and newspapers, with close readings of the work of Charles G.D. Roberts, Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman, William Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Frederick George Scott. Bentley chronicles the formation, reception, national and international successes, and eventual disintegration (after the 1895 'War Among the Poets') of the Confederation Group, whose poetry forever changed the perception and direction of Canadian literature. With the aid of biographical, political, and sociological analyses, Bentley's literary history delineates the group's political, aesthetic, and thematic dispositions and characteristics, and contextualizes them not only within Canadian history and politics, but also within contemporary intellectual and literary currents, including Romantic nationalism, 'Canadianism', and poetic formalism. Bentley casts new light on the poets' commonalities - such as their debt to Young Ireland, their commitment to careful workmanship, and their participation in the American mind-cure movement - as well as on their most accomplished and anthologized poems from 1880 to 1897. In the process, he presents a compelling case for the literary and historical importance of these six men and their poems in light of Canada's cultural and political past, and defends their right to be known as Canada's first poetic fraternity at a time when Canada was striving to achieve literary and national distinction. The Confederation Group of Canadian Poets, 1880-1897 is an erudite and innovative work of literary history and critical interpretation that belongs on the bookshelf of every serious scholar of literary studies.

The selections in this survey of the narrative and lyric poets of Confederation and the later nineteenth century have been chosen to remind readers of the distances and diversities involved as Canadians struggled toward nationhood. Along with essays on Sangster and Mair, the first poets consciously writing of the Canadian scene and the Canadian identity, there are individual studies of Crawford, Roberts, Lampman, Scott and Service. Some of the authors analyse a single work in a poet's canon; others consider several themes or evaluate a poet's philosophical or religious position. To these essays are added three by Norman Newton, George Woodcock and Roy Daniells on the era of "high colonialism". The book contains ten pieces published in the journal Canadian Literature over the last thirteen years and five new ones written specifically to enhance this collection.

Poet-critic Tom Marshall examines four stages in the development of apurely Canadian tradition in poetry through a focus on the work ofmajor poets writing in English from the mid-nineteenth century to thepresent.