The lovely treachery of words

This collection of essays by a distinguished Canadian novelist, poet, and critic concentrates on the age-old act of storytelling and its significance to individuals and society in Canada. The essays, some never before published, examine such issues as silence, violence, and eroticism in the works of Sinclair Ross, Malcolm Lowry, Margaret Lawrence, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, and Willa Cather. They also deal with the long poem in relation to the uncertainty of the modern storytelling impulse, the criticism of Northrop Frye, the Canadian writer and the American literary tradition, women in Prairie fiction, nationalism and literature, and Canadian literary strategies.