BARBARA DRENNAN
Anyone who picks up the collection Canadian Canons: Essays in Literary Value, edited by Robert Lecker, expecting a celebration of the status quo will be sadly disappointed. In an attempt to make overt the socio-political values which are inscribed in the construction of English- and French-Canadian literary canons, this text offers a multi-voiced scrutiny of canon-making.
To this reader, the word canon resonates intertextually with images of the papal crosier anointing saintly texts, Canadian or otherwise. She also envisions books chosen as cultural 'canon'-fodder, showering 'the nutritious best,' like Puffed Wheat, over unsuspecting students. This 'best,' according to the essayists in Canadian Canons, means those works which reflect the cohesive values of nationalism, transcendent idealism, and liberal humanism. These values are disseminated through encounters with both French and English literary canons. Accepted without question, they colonize our imaginations, our literary practices and discourse. Canadian Canons initiates a critical dialogue which asks questions of our institutions, canons, and inherent value-systems.
The contributors' list gives no indication that the reader can expect a frontal assault on literary institutions. In fact, what is evident in the biographical material is that these writers are implicated in the practices which they wish to scrutinize because they, too, create canons through their teaching. Canons seem a necessary adjunct to curricula, Canadian cultural consciousness, expression and identity. Yet Canadian Canons illustrates effectively that the two-part issue of criteria for selection and inherent value-systems can be addressed without confrontational rejection of literary institutions, such as those which facilitated these essays. Lecker and his contributors do not identify themselves as 'outsiders' or 'marginalized.' Rather, positioned within the 'mainstream,' they actively resist the hegemonic exclusiveness of canon-building by adopting a poststructuralist/postmodern stance of serious yet playful rapprochement, urging cordial negotiations within a pluralistic paradigm for Canadian cultural expression. Each writer employs a unique set of deconstructive tactics, not in the spirit of tearing down but rather in that of constructive critique.
For the theatre researcher, the essays of direct interest are those three which deal with drama and theatre: 'The Idea of a National Theatre' by Denis Salter, 'Voices (off): Deconstructing the Modem English-Canadian Dramatic Canon' by Richard Paul Knowles, and 'The New Quebec Theatre' by Lucie Robert.
From the outset, the inclusion of drama in a text about literature poses the real problem of the naturalized collapse of 'theatre' into 'drama,' a discursive strategy which obfuscates literary privilege. In this regard, as Lucie Robert tells us, because the French-Canadian crisis has been articulated as one which concerns language, expression and self-identity, the politically-charged Quebec troupes consciously view theatre, in theory and practice, as a unique aesthetic form which does not depend upon words. English-Canadians are only beginning to consider the conventional paradigms which delimit their notions of theatre and drama. As Richard Knowles points out, theatre practitioners who do not generate literary dramas find their work devalued and marginalized.
Identifying this discursive problem begs the question of the development of a 'national theatre.' Denis Salter suggests that the ideal of 'nationalism' has functioned as an imaginary zeitgeist underlying the institutionalization of theatre in Canada. Viewed in the context of the literary history presented in Canadian Canons, we learn that a 'national drama' also reinforces the interests of the literary institution. By extension, if we see theatre as an interpretation of a literary text, then the cultural field is open to the ideal of a 'national theatre.'
Historically the name 'Vincent Massey' links national drama with theatre. Other names, other discourses are missing, however, from this cultural ideogram. Roy Mitchell, for example, sought a national theatre expression distinct from a national literature. Salter's essay questions the ideological value of 'nationalism' but his narrative also devalues those who have used theatre to express a 'Canadian' outlook: experimentalists such as Herman Voaden and social activists, mostly amateurs and women, who remain barely visible in our discourse.
Mention must be made, too, of Lorraine Weir's deconstruction of Linda Hutcheon's writings on postmodernism which have become the English-Canadian authoritative 'wisdom' on this complex subject, for theatre as well as drama. The issues raised around canon-building apply also to interpretive theories and metaphors. As is the case with Northrop Frye's paradigm of the garrison mentality, we continue to reinscribe these totalizing fictions in our collective imaginations without question. Weir offers insights into Hutcheon's theory which demonstrate how Hutcheon's discourse satisfies conventional thinking and traditional value-systems.
Seeking to undermine the rigidity of institutionalized canon-building, Canadian Canons offers critical strategies other than alienating rhetorical polemics. Conservative readers will find these essays accessible, perceptive and informative; one hopes they will also begin to question. If our sixties experience taught us anything, it was that social and political change occurs only through changes in attitudes within the system itself. We must destabilize that which appears as coherent common sense by transforming the collective Canadian cultural field into what Sherry Simon has aptly described as 'problematized space.' Only then will we be able to articulate what we experience empirically as culturally different.