{"id":74,"date":"2016-03-11T02:23:57","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T09:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/?p=74"},"modified":"2016-03-11T02:23:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T09:23:57","slug":"32-fryes-view-of-the-canadian-literary-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/2016\/03\/11\/32-fryes-view-of-the-canadian-literary-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"3:2 Frye’s View of the Canadian Literary Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

3 ]\u00a0It is interesting, and telling of literary criticism at the time, that while Frye lights on this duality in Scott\u2019s work, or tension between \u201cprimitive and civilized\u201d representations; however, the fact that Scott wrote poetry romanticizing the \u201cvanishing Indians\u201d and<\/i> wrote policies aimed at the destruction of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people \u2013 as a distinct people, is never brought to light. In 1924, in his role as the most powerful bureaucrat in the department of Indian Affairs, Scott wrote:<\/p>\n

The policy of the Dominion has always been to protect Indians, to guard their identity as a race and at the same time to apply methods, which will destroy that identity and lead eventually to their disappearance as a separate division of the population (In Chater, 23).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For this blog assignment, I would like you to explain why it is that Scott\u2019s highly active role in the purposeful destruction of Indigenous people\u2019s cultures is not relevant for Frye in his observations above? You will find your answers in Frye\u2019s discussion on the problem of \u2018historical bias\u2019 (216) and in his theory of the forms of literature as closed systems (234 \u20135).<\/p>\n

————————————<\/p>\n

I find this question very difficult to answer, not because of a lack of content or understanding, but because of a feeling of discomfort and unwillingness to write the answer that I keep returning to. I must be missing something, and I hope I am, because all I can come up with is: in Frye\u2019s mention of Duncan Campbell Scott, Scott\u2019s role in the purposeful destruction of Indigenous people\u2019s cultures is not relevant because to him, indigenous people\u2019s cultures are outside of what he deems important elements of what forms the Canadian culture, history, and imagination.<\/p>\n

Frye argues that Canada\u2019s history, its speed of growth and lack of a rooted social imagination, inhibits Canadian writers\u2019 ability to establish its own unique tradition of writing (Frye 221). He sees the Canadian awareness as lacking something, which lends to its inability to establish a concrete identity. In an attempt to define what is missing, he argues that it is not the question of \u201cWho am I?\u201d that is so difficult to answer, it is the question of \u201cWhere is here?\u201d (Frye 222). This brings us back to the connection between land and stories. When I read this sentence of Frye\u2019s\u00a0 I excitedly wrote in my page margin, \u201cif this is your land, where are your stories?\u201d (Chamberlain Intro). \u00a0Frye alludes to our inability to answer this question with his discussion of the historical disconnect between Canadians (European settlers and their descendants, to Frye) and the land that they began to call home. He points to our inability to answer the question \u201cWhere is here?\u201d as the prominent barrier to carving out a definable Canadian identity.<\/p>\n

When it comes to Frye\u2019s lack of commentary on the role of Duncan Campbell Scott, as our professor has already pointed out, one key aspect of his theory helps us understand how he views the role of indigenous culture in the formation of the Canadian literary mind. He argues that \u201cthe forms of literature are autonomous: they exist within literature itself, and cannot be derived from any experience outside literature\u201d (Frye 234). So, what about orality<\/em>? It would appear that for Frye, stories found in oral traditions have no influence on the form of literature adopted by a nation. However, he goes on to argue that \u201cliterature is conscious mythology: as society develops, its mythical stories become structural principles of storytelling\u201d (Frye 234). \u00a0I interpret Frye\u2019s argument as coming from a linear understanding of the progression of a society\u2019s form of storytelling. Returning to the idea that the dominant western school of thought views societies as \u201cprogressing\u201d from mythology in the form of oral traditions to the eventual discovery of the written word; Frye, in line with this mode of thinking, is perhaps arguing that the literary mind of most societies begins historically with a shared mythology that then \u201cprogresses\u201d into a more structured, written form of storytelling unique to that society. For Frye, the problem with the Canadian literary mind is that it hasn\u2019t gone through that progression. The Canadian history of European settlers and their descendants begins with their first steps on this land, plucked from overseas and dropped here without any mythical knowledge<\/a> of the land\u2019s history (233).<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t forget that Frye is a Canadian, formed by Canadian history and not outside the \u201cCanadian literary mind\u201d he is trying so adamantly to dissect. Perhaps for him, he doesn\u2019t feel it is necessary to address the contradictory actions and writing of Duncan Campbell Scott in relation to indigenous peoples\u2019 culture because their culture is outside of the Canadian literary mind he is interested in, and does not belong in his discussion. In the historical establishment of Canadian literature, he defines the role of indigenous peoples, their culture, mythology<\/a> and land, as \u201cnineteenth-century literary conventions\u201d (Frye 235). I am reminded of King’s ‘imaginary Indian.’<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sierra Gale<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground<\/em>. Toronto:\u00a0 AA. Knopf, 2003. Print.<\/p>\n

Frye, Northrop. The Bush Garden; Essays on the Canadian Imagination.<\/i> 2011 Toronto: Anansi. Print.<\/p>\n

Houston, James. “Inuit Myth and Legend.” The Canadian Encyclopedia<\/em>. Feb. 07, 2006. Web. March 10, 2016.<\/p>\n

Klymasz, Robert. “Folklore.” The Canadian Encyclopedia.<\/em> Feb. 07, 2006. Web. March 10, 2016.<\/p>\n

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. <\/i>Toronto:\u00a0<\/i>Anansi Press. 2003. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 ]\u00a0It is interesting, and telling of literary criticism at the time, that while Frye lights on this duality in Scott\u2019s work, or tension between \u201cprimitive and civilized\u201d representations; however, the fact that Scott wrote poetry romanticizing the \u201cvanishing Indians\u201d and wrote policies aimed at the destruction of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people \u2013 as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sierragalecontributingthreads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}