Anthologies and the Canonization Process: A Case Study of the English-Canadian Literary Field, 1920-1950

Ethnic anthologies, narrowly defined here as anthologies that publish non-English-language writing, hardly appear at all in this group of anthologies. Two association anthologies and two academic-professional anthologies are the exceptions. In the academic-professional category, A Book of Canadian Prose and Verse (1923) contains six untranslated poems by Louis Frechette, occupying eight pages. Frechette's work is followed by a poetic tribute from John Reade, titled "To Louis Frechette / On the occasion of his poems being crowned by the French Academy" (49). In his poem, Reade describes French- and English-Canadians as "one great race to be," because both descend from Bretons and Normans (49). In keeping with the nationalist view of the role of literature in nation-building, verse is used by Reade to call for the unity of two ethnicities, based on similarities in genealogical histories. In addition, the poet's reference to the French Academy gestures simultaneously toward the cultural cringe of colonial writers and to the importance of language as a marker of an ethnic group. Also in the academic-professional category, Bliss Carman's and Lorne Pierce's Our Canadian Literature presents an eighty-three-page section of French-Canadian poetry. Sandra Campbell explains that Pierce's self-proclaimed goal was to unify the French and English sectors of Canada through cultural exchanges; he read French-Canadian litera ture and met the authors during the course of his work as literary editor of Ryerson Press (138-39). Pierce's rationale for a bilingual edition of a poetry anthology is similar to the assumptions underlying Reade's poem. Pierce writes, in the foreword to Our Canadian Literature: "The golden age of letters in France and England was born of a common source. In Canada the two traditions again meet, and the roots are buried deep in a common soil" (x). Pierce also encourages other anthologists to create bilingual anthologies: "To speak of Canadian verse without including Canadian poetry written in French is a common fault among us, and one that can no longer be condoned" (x). Writing from " 'La Ferme,' York Mills," Pierce belongs, physically and ideologically, to the traditional, centrist view of Canada's history, that view which recognizes only two founding nations as responsible for Canada's development (x). An example of the articulation of internationalism and nationalism appears in Stephen's The Golden Treasury of Canadian Verse, which Scott so roundly