The Decline of Hugh MacLennan

The author examines the critical reassessment in the 1960s of Hugh MacLennan's 1945 novel Two Solitudes. He argues that the novel's fading appeal in that decade had less to do with questions about its literary value and more with changing attitudes about who could legitimately write about French Canadians. By the sixties, the author maintains, critics no longer believed that MacLennan understood Quebec society and thus could not believe that he could produce a realistic fictional portrait of the province. This attitude framed the critical response to his 1967 novel The Return of the Sphinx, as well as the reconsideration of Two Solitudes. The author argues that the shift away from MacLennan as a source for understanding Quebec and toward presumably more authentic French-language voices during this decade also signalled the beginning of a larger disengagement from Quebec on the part of English-Canadian writers, who came to believe that they lacked the legitimacy to write about Quebec.

University of Toronto Quarterly

Vol. 85

no. 1

43-68

Winter 2016

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