Antimodernist Antecedents in Early Canadian Modernism : Archibald MacMechan’s 'A Ballade of Canadian Literature' and F.R. Scott’s 'The Canadian Authors Meet'

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Antimodernist Antecedents in Early Canadian Modernism : Archibald MacMechan’s 'A Ballade of Canadian Literature' and F.R. Scott’s 'The Canadian Authors Meet'
Abstract
The author points out that Dalhousie University professor Archibald MacMechan’s (1862-1933) regular column in the Montreal Standard newspaper titled “The Dean’s Window” (from 1906 to 1933) is an important index to educated antimodernist literary values. He notes that MacMechan brought his reading of world literature into his appraisals of the Canadian scene, through his groundbreaking work, Head-waters of Canadian Literature (1924). In a 1912 “Dean’s Window” column, MacMechan, a published poet, opened with a poem of his own, “The Ballade of Canadian Literature,” which anticipated Montreal poet F.R. Scott’s (1899-1985) “The Canadian Authors Meet” (1927) — itself a seminal work of early Canadian modernism. By no means binaries, the author argues that the degree to which modernism and antimodernism could resemble each other is manifest in MacMechan’s and Scott’s poems, even though Scott’s poem eviscerates the Canadian Authors Association, an organization of which MacMechan was a founding member.
Publication
American Review of Canadian Studies
Volume
Vol. 49
Issue
no. 3
Pages
394-412
Date
September 2019
Language
en
Citation
Narbonne, André. “Antimodernist Antecedents in Early Canadian Modernism : Archibald MacMechan’s ‘A Ballade of Canadian Literature’ and F.R. Scott’s ‘The Canadian Authors Meet.’” American Review of Canadian Studies Vol. 49, no. 3 (September 2019): 394–412.
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