Description:
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.
Brief description: 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.
Review Quotes:
"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