Oral Tradition and Cultural Hybridization: The Canadian Imagination

In defining Canadian literature, D.M.R. Bentley outlines two archetypes: the baseland, which is defined by British traditions with European form that borrows from classics, and invokes "recollection, structure, teleology, and rational meaning" (Bentley1); and the hinterland, which is defined as an American transcendentalist, modernist and post-modernist challenge that experiments with baseline themes and forms, focusing on process and experience. From the colonial works of Oliver Goldsmith, the Confederation writings of Emily Pauline Johnson and Duncan Campbell Scott, through the works of modernists Earle Birney and postmodernists Frederick Reginald Scott and Fred Wah, what defines Canada changes within the portrayal of Canadian history and Canadian identity. Ultimately, though, these archetypes fail to take into consideration the authentic Canadian imagination, which is that of the Native people of Canada. The oral tradition that dominated Canada before the arrival of European settlers is the authentic Canadian voice, and everything produced by the European writers settling in the Canada is either a stifling removal of that voice, or a European-Canadian hybrid.
Goldsmith employs Bentley’s baseland archetype in his poem “The Rising Village”, appropriating European models, while ultimately misrepresenting the indigenous population in Canada. The baseland poetry allows for the European structure of closed worked like couplets and sonnets to properly convey their "outsider looking in" view of the land around them. Goldsmith's "The Rising Village" uses British themes as well as heroic couplet in order to define Canada by European standards. Goldsmith introduces the four stage theory, from the pastoral settings of Britannia, to the Pr...

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...June 22 2006. http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2006/06/22/prime-minister-harper-offers-full-apology-chinese-head-tax.
Johnson, Emily Pauline. "A Cry From An Indian Wife" Brown, Russell, Donna Bennett, eds. An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Third Edition. University of Oxford Press, 2010. 228.
Scott, Duncan Campbell. "The Forsaken" and "The Onondaga Madonna" Brown, Russell, Donna Bennett, eds. An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Third Edition. University of Oxford Press, 2010. 253-255.
Scott, Frederick Reginald. "All Spikes but the Last" Brown, Russell, Donna Bennett, eds. An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Third Edition. University of Oxford Press, 2010. 413.
Wah, Fred. "Waiting for Saskatchewan" Brown, Russell, Donna Bennett, eds. An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Third Edition. University of Oxford Press, 2010. 871.