The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination

by Northrop Frye, Lisa Moore (Introduction)

Overview

Originally published in 1971,The Bush Garden features Northrop Frye’s timeless essays on Canadian literature and painting, and an introduction by bestselling author Lisa Moore.

In this cogent collection of essays written between 1943 and 1969, formidable literary critic and theorist Northrop Frye explores the Canadian imagination through the lens of the country’s artistic output: prose, poetry, and paintings. Frye offers insightful commentary on the works that shaped a “Canadian sensibility,” and includes a comprehensive survey of the landscape of Canadian poetry throughout the 1950s, including astute criticism of the work of E. J. Pratt, Robert Service, Irving Layton, and many others.

Written with clarity and precision,The Bush Garden is a significant cache of literary criticism that traces a pivotal moment in the country’s cultural history and the evolution of Frye’s thinking at various stages of his career. These essays are evidence of Frye’s brilliance, and cemented his reputation as Canada’s — and the world’s — foremost literary critic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487002671
Publisher:	House of Anansi Press Inc
Publication date:	08/26/2017
Series:	A List
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Northrop Frye was one of our most distinguished and respected authorities on English literature. Prior to his death in 1991, he was principal and chancellor of Victoria College, University of Toronto, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

LISA MOORE is the acclaimed author of the novels Caught, February, and Alligator; the story collections Open and Something for Everyone; and the young-adult novel Flannery. Her books have won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and CBC’s Canada Reads, been finalists for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Moore is also the co-librettist, along with Laura Kaminsky, of the opera February, based on her novel of the same name. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Read an Excerpt

The question of Canadian identity, so far as it affects the creative imagination, is not a “Canadian” question at all, but a regional question. An environment turned outward towards the sea, like so much of Newfoundland, and one turned towards inland seas, like so much of the Maritimes, are an imaginative contrast: anyone who has been conditioned by one in his early years can hardly be conditioned by the other in the same way. Anyone brought up on the urban plain of Southern Ontario or the gentle pays farmland along the south shore of the St. Lawrence may become fascinated by the great sprawling wilderness of Northern Ontario or Ungava, may move their and live with its people and become accepted as one of them, but if he paints or writes about it he will paint or write as an imaginative foreigner. And what can there be in common between an imagination nurtured on the prairies, where it is a centre of consciousness diffusing itself over a vast flat expanse stretching to a remote horizon, and one nurtured in British Columbia, where it is in the midst of gigantic trees and mountains leaping into the sky all around it, and obliterating the horizon everywhere?

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Any publication by Northrop Frye is an important literary event; this one is of the highest importance to Canadian literature. Here Frye has collected all the essays he believes to be of permanent value on Canadian writing and painting. His tremendous intelligence and erudition is thus focused on a much smaller field of vision than it normally is. Tethered in its own backyard, as it were, this formidable creature can be observed more closely than it can be when it roams the far reaches of the literary world.” — Globe and Mail

“These reviews are still relevant, partly because Frye is such a good critic and partly because his reviews embraced such a wide range of poetry that, perhaps especially in retrospect, they provide a fascinating sense of process through which a literature develops . . . We can respond to the immediate perceptions of a subtle and literate critical mind.” — Maclean’s

“Frye’s handiwork is equivalent to most everyone’s masterwork. Nor can I imagine a more perceptive book being written about the Canadian poetic imagination. Northrop Frye resembles nobody so much as a poet Midas — everything he touches turns into poetic metaphor.” — Toronto Star

“Perhaps the most remarkable thing about The Bush Garden is that it reveals Northrop Frye as a practical critic. He does not try to fit everything he reads into preconceived theories, and the range of his sympathies is admirably wide. And he succeeds in demonstrating the importance for Canadian writers of their Canadian forebears.” — CBC Anthology

“Many academic critics are like a laboratory scientist, not much good in the field; in The Bush Garden, Frye shows himself as good a field critic as he is a theoretical one. He recognizes the splendor of a bird on the wing as surely as he describes its anatomy in the lecture hall.” — Victoria Daily Times

Editorial Reviews

Any publication by Northrop Frye is an important literary event; this one is of the highest importance to Canadian literature. Here Frye has collected all the essays he believes to be of permanent value on Canadian writing and painting. His tremendous intelligence and erudition is thus focused on a much smaller field of vision than it normally is. Tethered in its own backyard, as it were, this formidable creature can be observed more closely than it can be when it roams the far reaches of the literary world.-- "Globe and Mail"

Frye's handiwork is equivalent to most everyone's masterwork. Nor can I imagine a more perceptive book being written about the Canadian poetic imagination. Northrop Frye resembles nobody so much as a poet Midas -- everything he touches turns into poetic metaphor.-- "Toronto Star"

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about The Bush Garden is that it reveals Northrop Frye as a practical critic. He does not try to fit everything he reads into preconceived theories, and the range of his sympathies is admirably wide. And he succeeds in demonstrating the importance for Canadian writers of their Canadian forebears.-- "CBC Anthology"

These reviews are still relevant, partly because Frye is such a good critic and partly because his reviews embraced such a wide range of poetry that, perhaps especially in retrospect, they provide a fascinating sense of process through which a literature develops . . . We can respond to the immediate perceptions of a subtle and literate critical mind.-- "Maclean's"

From the Publisher

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about The Bush Garden is that it reveals Northrop Frye as a practical critic. He does not try to fit everything he reads into preconceived theories, and the range of his sympathies is admirably wide. And he succeeds in demonstrating the importance for Canadian writers of their Canadian forebears.

CBC Anthology

Any publication by Northrop Frye is an important literary event; this one is of the highest importance to Canadian literature. Here Frye has collected all the essays he believes to be of permanent value on Canadian writing and painting. His tremendous intelligence and erudition is thus focused on a much smaller field of vision than it normally is. Tethered in its own backyard, as it were, this formidable creature can be observed more closely than it can be when it roams the far reaches of the literary world.

Globe and Mail

These reviews are still relevant, partly because Frye is such a good critic and partly because his reviews embraced such a wide range of poetry that, perhaps especially in retrospect, they provide a fascinating sense of process through which a literature develops . . . We can respond to the immediate perceptions of a subtle and literate critical mind.

Maclean’s

Frye’s handiwork is equivalent to most everyone’s masterwork. Nor can I imagine a more perceptive book being written about the Canadian poetic imagination. Northrop Frye resembles nobody so much as a poet Midas — everything he touches turns into poetic metaphor.

Toronto Star