Catching the Torch: Contemporary Canadian Literary Responses to World War I - Softcover

Neta Gordon (author)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1771122382 ISBN 13: 9781771122382

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Catching the Torch examines contemporary novels and plays written about Canada's participation in World War I. Exploring such works as Jane Urquhart's The Underpainter and The Stone Carvers, Jack Hodgins's Broken Ground, Kevin Kerr's Unity (1918), Stephen Massicotte's Mary's Wedding, and Frances Itani's Deafening, the book considers how writers have dealt with the compelling myth that the Canadian nation was born in the trenches of the Great War.

In contrast to British and European remembrances of WWI, which tend to regard it as a cataclysmic destroyer of innocence, or Australian myths that promote an ideal of outsize masculinity, physical bravery, and white superiority, contemporary Canadian texts conjure up notions of distinctively Canadian values: tolerance of ethnic difference, the ability to do one's duty without complaint or arrogance, and the inclination to show moral as well as physical courage. Paradoxically, Canadians are shown to decry the horrors of war while making use of its productive cultural effects.

Through a close analysis of the way sacrifice, service, and the commemoration of war are represented in these literary works, Catching the Torch argues that iterations of a secure mythic notion of national identity, one that is articulated via the representation of straightforward civic and military participation, work to counter current anxieties about the stability of the nation-state, in particular anxieties about the failure of the ideal of a national ""character.

About this title

About the Author

Neta Gordon is an associate professor at Brock University, where she teaches courses on Canadian literature. She is a co-editor of The Broadview Introduction to Literature (2013) and has written on such authors as Barbara Gowdy, SKY Lee, and Ann-Marie MacDonald.

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Excerpt from Catching the Torch: Contemporary Canadian Literary Responses to World War I by Neta Gordon

From the Introduction

DavidWilliams asserts that the continued interest of Canadian writers in the FirstWorld War has nothing to do with the myth that our nation was born in thetrenches. Daniel Francis states that β?‚??“if a nation is a group of people whoshare the same illusions about themselves, then Canadians need some newillusions,β?‚?87 which mayvery well be the case. That said, there is simply too much discourseβ?‚??€?in historybooks, in the press, in literature, and in literary criticismβ?‚??€?promotingprecisely that myth about national origin for us to dismiss out of hand itscurrent hold on Canadian imaginations. The question then becomes: What kind ofCanada was born in the war, at least according to the new literary reimaginingsof that series of events? In his conclusion to DeathSo Noble, Vance argues that for postwar Canadians,the

legacy. . . [was] not of despair, aimlessness, and futility, but of promise, certainty,and goodness. It assured Canadians that the war had been a just one, fought todefend Christianity and Western civilization, and that Canadaβ?‚??„?s sons anddaughters had done well by their country and would not be forgotten for their sacrifices.To these great gifts, the myth added the nation-building thesis. By encouragingpeople to focus their thoughts on a time when the nation appeared to be unitedin a common cause, the memory of war could prove that the twentieth century didindeed belong to Canada.88

Unsurprisingly,this legacy has not been entirely sustained. Though most of the authors writingabout the war to a much greater extent than Findley consider the specificallyCanadian experience in the war, that focus has not resulted in a wholesaleabandoning of the idea that many lives were destroyed due to the incompetenceof military officers, the greed of war profiteers, and the stupidity ofgovernment officials. For example, Hodginsβ?‚??„?s BrokenGround critiques the failures of the SoldierSettlement Act, while Urquhartβ?‚??„?s The Stone Carvers and Cumynβ?‚??„?s The Famished Lover both disparage the work of the Department of Soldiersβ?‚??„? CivilRe-establishment in dealing with issues of veteran employment and pensions.Furthermore, the idea of β?‚??“Western civilizationβ?‚? and a unified nation isinterrogated, as works like Thiessenβ?‚??„?s Vimy and Boydenβ?‚??„?s Three Day Road consider the previously marginalized stories of francophoneand First Nations participation, while Broken Ground, The Stone Carvers, and Unity (1918) explore the motley of immigrant communities on the homefront who try to make meaning out of war. The idea that the war β?‚??“had been ajust oneβ?‚? is, in a certain way, countered with depictions of war activityβ?‚??€?whetheron the battlefield or in field hospitalsβ?‚??€?that almost uniformly portray horror,chaos, and the agonizing loss of life. Finally, many worksβ?‚??€?most explicitly Swanβ?‚??„?sThe Deep and Poliquinβ?‚??„?s ASecret Between Usβ?‚??€?confront the possibility that those whoparticipated in the war may indeed be either forgotten or, at least, rememberedin ways that have more to do with the needs of the living than the acts of thedead.

Yetdespite the ways contemporary Canadian First World War fictions affirm thegeneral Western narrative associated with the fighting of the warβ?‚??€?that it was afutile, costly, dreadful military exerciseβ?‚??€?Vanceβ?‚??„?s seemingly hyperbolicdeclaration about β?‚??“promise, certainty, and goodness,β?‚? also finds purchase. Tobe sure, the reconciling of competing narratives is often a delicate activityand sometimes a heartbreaking one, for authors and readers are faced with theimpossible question: Was itβ?‚??€?the horror, the chaos, the lossβ?‚??€?worth it? Not oneof the works I explore here culminates in pessimism or condemnation of Canadaβ?‚??„?sparticipation in the First World War, including works like BrokenGround, The Deep, and A Secret BetweenUs, all of which suggest that narrativesthat depend on collective remembrance are doomed to recede in culturalimportance, given enough time, because the collective will eventually choose toremember something else. Most of the works in this corpus might even be calledoptimistic in their intimations that the Canada that is born in the First WorldWar is populated by those given to seeking love, healing, and a sense of hopeand obligation toward community. Many of the narratives this volume examines rehabilitatethe figure of the father and/or a conception of productive masculinity; manyfollow in the tradition of early-twentieth-century home front novels by womento consider the value of female work, in wartime and beyond; many exploreproductive ways to think about communicating across cultural and experientialdivides; and most conclude with a look to the future (which is now the present)and a sense of promise that is decidedly free from irony. Thus, the remembranceof the First World War that has emerged in the past decade or so reflects adesire not to destroy the illusions Canadians have or have had aboutthemselves, but rather to re-examine how those illusions about the war, withall its attendant horror and misery and loss, might offer a space forconceptions of the best Canadian self to emerge.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1771122382
• ISBN 13: 9781771122382
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 222