James Doyle, Progressive Heritage: The Evolution of a
Politically Radical Literary Tradition in Canada, 2002
This book has
tried to suggest the literary significance of many Canadian writers who were
unjustly ignored or condemned because of their political beliefs. The poetry of
Joe Wallace, the novels of Dyson Carter, the early work of Dorothy Livesay and
Milton Acorn, all the extensive and complex tradition of anti-capitalist
creative writing in Canada, are part of the structure of this country’s culture
and should be read and written about with the same-mindedness that is
presumably applied to those writers who profess other political assumptions.
James Doyle
pp. 298-299
Those who have the good fortune of
studying Canadian literature are often exposed to the standard bourgeois
classics of Canadian poetry, novels and drama—these bourgeois classics are what
we call the Canadian canon of must read literature. There are also leading literary
critics such as Northrop Frye who are embodiments, in a thoughtful and nuanced
way, of such a canon. There is, though, a para-canonical literature in Canada
of the Marxist left that is often ignored in the teaching of the standard
approach to Canadian literature. The
obvious strength and appeal of Progressive
Heritage is the way this left of centre literary heritage is, unpacked and
unravelled, in a chronological and thematic manner.
Progressive
Heritage is divided into 11 compact and insightful
chapters: 1) Introduction, 2) The Progressive Heritage: Beginnings to 1900, 3)
Antecedents and Alternatives to Bolshevism, 4) The 1920s: Communists and Fellow
Travellers, 5) The 1930s: Socialist and Other Realisms, 6) The 1930s:
Progressive Drama, Poetry, and Non-Fiction, 7) The 1940s: War and Post-War, 8)
The 1950s: Post-War to Cold War, 9) After Stalinism: Decline and Achievement,
10) The New Left and 11) Conclusion. Doyle does not, rightly so, restrict
himself to those on the left who are dogmatic Marxists (of various types and
tendencies). There were, of course, the standard flag bearers of historic and
literary left of centre read of Canada such as Margaret Fairley and Stanley
Ryerson—Fairley and Ryerson are repeatedly held high and often quoted just as
the poetry of Joe Wallace and novels of Dyson Carter are duly noted and
commented upon. There were also writers such as Dorise Nielsen (who Canadians
should know much more about—-a female Bethune in China), Dorothy Livesay,
Milton Acorn and George Ryga who wrote for communist-socialist publications and
belonged to the party when young but were not leftist ideologues. Doyle tracks
and traces the many writers in Canada who were not communists but who were
fellow travellers with an anti-capitalist, pro-labour, suspicious of war and
wrote wisely and well about the plight of the Canadian people who were often
victims of the power elite of big business, politics and militarism.
Progressive
Heritage is a veritable counter canon that brings
to light many writers and artists within English and French speaking Canada
that are often consciously ignored or simply unknown. Doyle has obviously done
his spade work well and he has brought forth from the Canadian mother lode much
literary gold. There is a fine bibliography at the end of the book for those
wanting to read yet further and deeper, but the many books, poems, literary
magazines and dramas (some known, others quite unknown) could easily make for a
life time reading and many a course to be taught both within the Canadian
counter-canon tradition and broader leftist literature.
The fact Doyle mentioned many Marxist
fellow travellers and others with a basic concern for economic justice does
mean more attention could have been paid to the literary contributions of those
from the historic CCF-NDP traditions and the tensions between the CCF-NDP and
the varieties of the nationalist New Left in Canada—the book would have been
stronger for such probes.
Doyle goes after Frye a variety of times
in Progressive Heritage for often
caricaturing or dismissing the radical literary left in Canada—Margaret Atwood
is also found wanting. Canadian worthies such as William Lyon Mackenzie, Louis
Riel, Tim Buck and Norman Bethune are, as expected, lauded. Earle Birney has
his fingers rapped as does Morley Callaghan and Hugh MacLennan (as incarnating
the bourgeois way). Doyle has certainly brought to the fore a more generous and
comprehensive way of reading the Canadian leftist literary tradition that is
both Marxist and non-Marxist, although the emphasis is on the Marxist heritage.
The final chapter, “The New Left”, is a must read overview of some of the
leading leftist nationalists such as Robin Mathews (who is a political
activist, poet, literary critic and dramatist—sadly so, much neglected and
ignored). Many in the New Left were
stirred into wakefulness by George Grant’s Red Tory classic, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian
Nationalism (1965)—Doyle could have connected the dots between classical
Canadian conservatism and the New Left with Grant as a significant bridge
between the two traditions.
I was rather pleased that Doyle included
a discussion of Stephen Leacock’s Arcadian
Adventures of the Idle Rich if for no other reason than that Leacock was a
definite conservative, but his form of Red Tory conservatism had many an
affinity with the leftward thinking of Scott, Forsey and King Gordon. It would
have been valuable if Doyle had threaded together how the leftist tradition in
Canada has many an affinity and antecedent in the Canadian Tory
touch—Leacock’s Arcadian Adventures of
the Idle Rich is a superb entrée into such an ethos and Tory literary
tradition as is Grant’s Lament for a
Nation—Lament is as much political missive as it is literature.
Progressive
Heritage: The Evolution of a Politically Radical Literary Tradition in Canada should be prime reading and on the main book shelf of anyone
interested in a more comprehensive understanding of Canadian literary life.
Such a book will expand the canon of Canadian Literature to a fuller and more
generous place and space- such was Doyle’s plea and it should not go unheeded
or unheard.
Ron Dart