W. J. Keith

The subtitles of these books, “Selected Non-Fiction” in the case of P.K. Page’s The Filled Pen and “An Autobiography by Other Means” in the case of Don Coles’s A Dropped Glove in Regent Street, suggest two very different kinds of books. Yet they are equally accurate designations; indeed, each could have been used for the…

It has been customary for some time to refer to the period of literary activity that began in this country in the late 1950s, gathered momentum in the 1960s and flourished for some twenty years or so after that, as the “Canadian Renaissance.” The leading writers who came to prominence at that time are now well known—at least to those who are interested in such…

One evening in the winter of 1958–59, while I was engaged in MA studies in English at the University of Toronto, I attended a meeting of the Graduate English Club. On entering the room, I soon became aware of a tiny middle-aged woman with a deeply wrinkled face, dressed in a turtleneck sweater and half-screened by cigarette…

“Problematic” may well be the most overused word in contemporary literary discussion. Ever since Freud opened the can of worms of the unconscious, we have been obsessed with a search for hidden motives and meanings, and this has spilled over into our reading of literature. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, we now know, is much more than the historical chronicle of a king of…