The primitive mystique : romance and realism in the depiction of the native Indian in English-Canadian fiction

Although several critics since the nineteenth century have written about the variety of interpretations of the native Indian in English-Canadian literature, no one has yet devoted a full-length study to the way the Indian is depicted in fiction alone. This dissertation thus examines a large cross-section of adult long fiction and investigates the degree to which the modes of romance and realism and the genres of romance and novel have informed these depictions. The dissertation is organized according to four major topics: love, religion, fighting, and community life. Each of these is divided into appropriate sub-topics, organized along roughly chronological lines. The chapter about love is the longest and focuses on fiction in which a white person and an Indian marry or have a love relationship, either potential or consummated. The chapter about religion focuses on fiction about the various kinds of relationships between native religions and Christianity. The chapter about fighting analyzes fiction about inter-tribal fighting, fighting along the frontier, and fighting between modern Indians and white authority. The chapter on community life focuses on fiction describing daily Indian life, from the pre-contact community to the contemporary reserve. Several conclusions emerge. First, the basic attitude to Indians reflects prevailing social attitudes. Second, the choice and use of genre are influenced to a significant degree by literary fashion. But more specific conclusions also emerge. Most importantly, romance is the dominant genre and romantic conventions of primitivism pervade almost all serious fiction on the subject, from variations on the Pastoral and Noble Savage conventions to a recent development approaching fertility myth. Instances of the realistic-novel as such are relatively rare, but realism of a documentary sort is frequent in romances which focus on social issues and is present for verisimilitude or ornamentation in many other romances. Finally,the best romances tend to have a sound basis in observable fact, just as the good novels have the subjective psychological dimension provided by romantic convention

Observations on William Gilpin's criticism of literature and the visual arts

This thesis is essentially concerned with analyzing William Gilpin's criticism and relating it to the critical ideas of his age. Gilpin was a man of taste who lived during a significant transitional period in the history of criticism. His criticism is rooted in the classical tradition and centered around classical principles. But many of his ideas, values, and tastes are radically different in emphasis from, or directly opposite to, those of classical theory. Gilpin, in his criticism of literature, subscribes to the theories that literature imitates nature, that it imitates the ideal rather than the actual, and that it must appeal to the reason. He stresses the objective aspects of literature and asserts the importance of such classical principles as decorum, unity, simplicity and clarity. But his interest in the sensational aspects of literary pictorialism, his non-humanistic concern with landscape poetry, his interest in intuitionalism, his defence of sublime obscurity, his occasional delight in emotions for their own sake, all reveal a turning away from classical values. Gilpin makes little effort to reconcile the inconsistencies and self-contradictions in his literary criticism. In his criticism of painting Gilpin is strongly influenced by the classicism of contemporary British painting. Again he advocates the imitation of ideal reality. He believes that the image is all important in painting and that it must be a generalized representation of the ideal central form of an object. He also believes that painting must appeal to the reason, and he usually treats the perceptive imagination as an essentially rational faculty. Occasionally he acknowledges painting's ability to cause emotional transport. Of the painter Gilpin requires knowledge of objects and of the rules of art. The painter's knowledge and technical skill are, however, useful only if they are directed by genius. Gilpin judges paintings by the principles established by the Roman school—design (decorum), composition, harmony, simplicity, exactness—and discusses these principles in an essentially classical manner. But he uses them to praise the Venetians, the Baroque masters, and landscape paintings. His criticism of painting has many inherent contradictions but is superficially fairly coherent. Sculpture is treated only briefly by Gilpin. He believes in idealization and praises simplicity, grace, proportion. But he opposes the rigid neo-classicists of his day by praising animation and even recommending strong action and emotion in sculptured figures and groups. Gilpin has high praise for the classical tradition in English architecture, especially for Burlington-Palladianism. And his criteria of architectural judgement— symmetry, proportion, simplicity—are essentially those of the classical tradition. He is concerned with formal rather than associative architectural values, and he is insistent that architecture be intellectually satisfactory and not only visually effective. He defends the Gothic, especially late Gothic, by attempting to prove its conformity to classical principles. The defence is not very successful, but his appreciation of the Gothic is obviously sincere. He discusses in terms of picturesque or associative values only such minor architectural forms as cottages and ruins. Gilpin defends and evaluates the natural garden in terms of essentially classical principles. The garden is nature methodized, and the method is selection and arrangement according to the rules of art. But Gilpin's acceptance of irregularity, his concern for purely visual values, and his praise of wild nature are in conflict with his basic critical attitude to the garden. Gilpin, in his criticism of the fine arts, attempts to reconcile various conflicting critical attitudes and principles. He is not always successful, but his attempt is an interesting example of late-eighteenth-century eclectic criticism.Arts, Faculty ofEnglish, Department ofGraduat