The Beginnings Of A National Literary Tradition
...over the status
of their national literature. One of the major problems facing early Canadian
writers was that the language and poetic conventions that they had inherited
from the Old World were inadequate for the new scenery and conditions in which
they now found themselves. Writers such as Susanna Moodie, Samuel Hearne, and
Oliver Goldsmith were what I would consider "Immigrant" authors. Even though
they were writing in Canada about Canada their style and their audiences were
primarily England and Europe. These authors wrote from an Old World perspective
and therefore were not truly Canadian authors. It took a group of homespun
young writers in the later part of the 19thCentury to begin to build a genuine
"discipline" of Canadian literary thought. This group, affectionately known as
The Confederation Poets', consisted of four main authors: Charles G.D. Roberts,
Bliss Carman, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Archibald Lampman. The Poets
ofConfederation "established what can legitimately be called the first distinct
"school" of Canadian poetry"(17, Keith). The term The Poets of Confederation'
is a misnomer since not one of these poets/authors was more than ten years old
when the Dominion of Canada was formed in 1867. However, all of these writers
were aware of the lack of a distinctive Canadian literary tradition and they
made efforts to create one for their successors. While each of these men had
their own distinctive writing style they all sought to contribute and create a
national' literature. According to R.E.Rashley in Poetry in Canada: The First
Three Steps " there is no Canadian poetry before [The Confederation Poets]
time"(98). These men were the first in a long line of authors and artists to
conceive of the need for a discernible national literature. The Confederation
Poets function was to "explore the new knowledge that they had acquired...
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