ENGL 3502 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Northrop Frye, Canadian Literature, Liberal Education
20 Feb 2016
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Document Summary
Literature and literary criticism can be ordered/studied systematically. Was not a serious study of canadian literature at the time. Believed literature could be systematic and psychological. Launched an archetypical approach trying to find archetypes in literature (how they effect canadians) Thought literature students could find a social element and question it. Believed in a liberal education, making you a full citizen. Facing the problem what are canadian traditions. Conclusion to a literary history of canada (1965 and 1971) Book set the tone for canadian literature. Tied to an imperialist mood the desire for canada to broaden its boarders. Treating canada as a blank space, not previously inhabited. To feel canadian" was to feel part of a no-man"s-land with huge rivers, lakes and islands that very few canadians had ever seen (254) One wonders if any other national consciousness has so large an amount of the unknown, the unrealized, the humanly undigested, so built into it (254)
