The Bush Garden

Essays on the Canadian Imagination

Northrop Frye

• Publisher: A List
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781487002671
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Art Theory & Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also by Northrop Frye
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction by Lisa Moore
• Contents
• Introduction: The Field Notes of a Public Critic by Linda Hutcheon
• Author’s Preface
• From “Letters in Canada” (University of Toronto Quarterly)
• Canada and Its Poetry
• The Narrative Tradition in English-Canadian Poetry
• Turning New Leaves
• Preface to an Uncollected Anthology
• Silence in the Sea
• Canadian and Colonial Painting
• David Milne: An Appreciation
• Lawren Harris: An Introduction
• Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada
• Selected Index
• Footnote