The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

Eco-Criticism
D.M.R. Bentley
The GayJGrey Moose: Essays on the Ecologies and
Mythologies of
Canadian Poetry 1690-1990. U of Ottawa P n.p.
Reviewed by Francis Mansbridge
Bentley's book is a fascinating if eccentric
collection of essays that till the soil of
mainly earlier Canadian poetry. His theory
melds new criticism with phenomenology
to form a uniquely Bentleyan blend. The
goal is lofty; he hopes that his "ecological"
approach can foster "the connection,
through poems, between man and nature",
and thus help criticism perform a much
needed humanistic function of helping heal
the wounds caused by our alienation from
nature. In the enemy's camp are those
aspects of deconstruction, feminism, poststructuralism
and post-modernism that are
the amoral facilitators of consumer capitalism,
"hostile to nature, history, locality,
individuality".
The moral mission of literature is resurrected
in a late twentieth century ecological
context; "It is essential that we ask of any
poem whether it shows contempt or
respect for the natural and human world".
His phenomenological parallel between
poetry and landscape assumes "a brain that
is no less material. . . than anything else
involved in the poetic process". The ideal
poet is not the inspired romantic or even
the voyager into the realms of the unconscious,
but the sensible (and socially
responsible) reflector of his or her culture.
While the book sustains a high level of
scholarship and contains many perceptive
readings of poems, his attempts to formulate
the connection between poetry and its
environment meet with limited success.
Poems are slippery customers and often foil
Bentley's attempts to snare them in his theoretical
net. In his view the sparseness of
lines in some prairie poetry reflects the low
density of population in that region. What
then do we make of the sparse lines of
Chinese poetry? Line length is said to relate
to the speed at which the speaker or subject
is moving; "the slower the speed the longer
.. . will be the line". But are not the long
lines of E.J. Pratt and Robert Service often
more conducive to speed? Elsewhere minimalist
lines are said best to represent the
austerity of the prairie landscape, but two
pages later the long lines of Anne Marriott's
"The Wind Our Enemy" reflect "the expansiveness
of our prairies". So which is it?
Bentley's comments are more illuminating
when he sets aside his ecological axe.
He writes at length on many long neglected
early poets, convincingly arguing their
importance in understanding the development
of our literature. "Calibanned" provides
an illuminating context for viewing
the early writing on Canada's aboriginal
peoples, and his analysis of the implications
of F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith's modernism
is brilliant—" The golden bough and the
golden arches have more in common than
may first be apparent".
While few would deny that poetry is intimately
related to its environment, denning
that relationship is tremendously complex.
Bentley's book is a courageous but overly
sanguine attempt to reveal a seamless web
in a world that may be rent beyond repair.
But it is an area that needs more discussion;
his provocative scholarship could well generate
some much needed debate within the
Canadian academic community that will
sharpen the ideas of all concerned. The best
thing about this book is that it is so
unashamedly unfashionable.