Читать книгу Highways of Canadian Literature онлайн

5 страница из 84

I wish, here, specially to remark my ideal and aim in writing Highways of Canadian Literature. It is, I believe, the duty of the literary historian and critic to respect his subject and to present it under its most significant and engaging aspects in order that he may win others to equal respect for his subject. Canadian Literature is important at least to Canadians; and, whatever be its comparative aesthetic and artistic dignity, it is an integral part or branch of English Literature. This book will justify itself if it compels Canadians to recognize the importance of their own literature, and wins other peoples to a decent respect for a literature which, while still in its adolescence, shows evidences of attaining to independent and vigorous adult estate—in the event of which Canadian literary creation, taste, and judgment will be based, not on the work of British or of American masters of poetry and imaginative prose, but on that of Canadian masters. Meanwhile, this book aims to disclose to Canadians the social and spiritual importance of their own literature and to determine its place or distinction in English Literature—in short, to promote in Canada and abroad what may aptly be called ‘the higher study’ of Canadian Literature.