The Old Canadian Question

E.K. Brown defined Canadian literature in his 1943 essay “The Problem of Canadian Literature” as writing “by those who, having been born in Canada, passed a considerable number of their best creative years in this country, and also writing by those who, wherever they may have been born, once arrived in Canada did important creative work and led much of their literary life among us.” With this indefinite definition, Brown initiated a debate that has been as notable for its controversy as for its irresolution. Now, in The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature, editor Eva-Marie Kröller takes another run at the question, accompanied by a team of highly credentialled Canadian literature scholars.

But Kröller and her cohorts take on more than just Brown in their retooling of CanLit perspectives, because, of course, that debate was furthered in the decades following Brown’s contribution. Significant trajectories were subsequently explored by scholars such as...