Catching the Torch: Contemporary Canadian Literary Responses to World War I

by Neta Gordon

Catching the Torch examines contemporary novels and plays written about Canada's participation in World War I. Exploring such works as Jane Urquhart's The Underpainter and The Stone Carvers , Jack Hodgins's Broken Ground , Kevin Kerr's Unity (1918), Stephen Massicotte's Mary's Wedding , and Frances Itani's Deafening , the book considers how writers have dealt with the compelling myth that the Canadian nation was born in the trenches of the Great War. In contrast to British and European remembrances of WWI, which tend to regard it as a cataclysmic destroyer of innocence, or Australian myths that promote an ideal of outsize masculinity, physical bravery, and white superiority, contemporary Canadian texts conjure up notions of distinctively Canadian tolerance of ethnic difference, the ability to do one's duty without complaint or arrogance, and the inclination to show moral as well as physical courage. Paradoxically, Canadians are shown to decry the horrors of war while making use of its productive cultural effects. Through a close analysis of the way sacrifice, service, and the commemoration of war are represented in these literary works, Catching the Torch argues that iterations of a secure mythic notion of national identity, one that is articulated via the representation of straightforward civic and military participation, work to counter current anxieties about the stability of the nation-state, in particular anxieties about the failure of the ideal of a national "character."

222 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catching the Torch: Contemporary Canadian Literary Response to World War I by Neta Gordon is a critical look at contemporary war literature. She earned a PhD from Queen's University publishing a dissertation on Canadian women writing genealogical narratives. She currently chairs the Department of English Language and Literature at Brock University. Gordon is well published in both journals and books.

2014 will be the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. The war is all but forgotten in the United States. If it is mentioned at all, it's by Marines celebrating their birthday (10 November) mentioning the battle at Bealleau Woods. In Canada and Australia the war is a much bigger part of their culture and heritage. Although becoming self governing and its own country in 1867, Canada was still part of the British Empire and when Britain declared war in 1914, Canada was pulled into the war. While the US and Europe viewed the war as the destruction of innocence one of the more romantic myths in popular culture is that Canada, as a nation, was born in the trenches of WWI. According to author Joseph Boyden, Canada was “an army to be reckoned with, no longer colonials.”

Gordon writes what can only be called a scholarly study of contemporary literature with WWI as the theme. In the US and Europe, WWI literature centers around loss such as T.S. Elliott's “The Wasteland” or Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and finally to the extreme Johnny Got His Gun. By examining Canadian fiction at different periods after the war, she tracks notable changes. There seems to be several noticeable changes in the tone of writing war fiction. Early on there is a kind of romanticized, call to duty outlook, followed by the horrors of the war and assigning blame. The officer class takes a beating in some novels their poor leadership. With time, the war comes back and there is a redeeming value and then heroism is previous wars is used to call up new soldiers for next war.
Catching the torch refers the final stanza of Flanders’s Field :

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from falling hands we throw
The torch

It has been many years since I read a critique of literature, maybe sophomore year in college. It was not a happy experience. Times changes and tastes mature and I can look at this critique with a better perspective. The book is very well researched and covers a range of Canadian literature. With the exception of “Flanders’s Field”, I am unfamiliar the literature used in the study, but the historian in me is adding new books to my reading list. I will re-read this book after reading the source novels. Gordon choice of source material supports thesis well. Canadians hate the horror of war, but the is a productive effect of war to national identity character. Views change to reflect what society wants to see. I imagine the horrors of the war will be replaced with respect for the fallen and pride in the nation next year. Canada lost 67,000 lives in WWI and twice that number were wounded. I can only be hoped that their sacrifice, no matter what the cause, will be remembered, especially today, Remembrance Day.

[James Gifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reviewed this book for BC Studies: "Neta Gordon’s Catching the Torch: Contemporary Canadian Literary Responses to World War I is a firmly contemporary study of the notion of the Great War in modern memory: that is, the First World War’s imaginative reconstruction or figurative operation in Canadian literature since Timothy Findley’s The Wars in 1977. In many respects, Findley is the continual touchstone of Gordon’s work, marking a rupture in Canadian thought between an emerging pacifist vision of wartime horrors and a lingering patriotic understanding of the First World War as the birth of the nation or, in the language of the text, its crucible. As a survey of Canadian representations of the war from the 1990s to the present, Gordon is on firm ground (most frequently on Broken Ground), and the volume’s value is indisputable in this respect."
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[John Seriot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly interesting and thought-provoking, but not a few passages are written in intellectual jargon which proves difficult to understand. Can't give the book more than three stars.