шш in review DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER - University of British ...

OPINIONS & NOTESsian illustrations, presents an often delightfulchronicle of life among the pioneers.E.-M.K.Entries on Callaghan and Vanderhaeghe featurein Gale's Contemporary Literary Criticism,vol. 41 ($90.00) ; the series surveys andexcerpts critical literature. More overtly bibliographicis John Bell's Canuck Comics (MatrixBooks, $12.95), abook containing lively historiesof the publishing of English- andFrench-language comic books in Canada, togetherwith a preliminary listing of titles, aprice guide, and an introductory essay byHarlan Ellison. In another bibliography, RobertGeorges and Stephen Stern have assembledAmerican and Canadian Immigrant andEthnic Folklore (Garland, $91.00), an annotatedguide to critical commentary, fuller onAmerican than Canadian sources because of"limited access" to Canadian materials. Thefifth edition of Holman's excellent A Handbookto Literature, newly compiled by W.Harmon (Collier Macmillan, $21.50), extendsits coverage to some of the terms ofcontemporary critical theory. In a differentkind of reassessment, C. Peter Ripley's TheBlack Abolitionist Papers, vol. II (Canada,1830-1865), (Univ. of North Carolina,$35.00), is a valuable contribution to blackhistory in Canada. Primarily an edited collectionof essays, letters, editorials, and speechesfrom various sources — all on the subject ofblack survival, educational and social opportunitiesin Canada, and the cause of abolition— the book also historically surveys the emergenceof black Canadian communities. Windsor,especially — with the journalism of Henryand Mary Bibb, James T. Holly, and MaryAnn Shadd Cary — achieved special prominence.The appearance of a book such as thisis long overdue, but it only begins to redressone of the several imbalances of our currentnotion of cultural history. One further collectionof interest assembles the proceedings of a1984 conference sponsored and published bythe Science Council of Canada, which addressesthe role of the social sciences both inshaping and in describing public policy:Social Science in Canada: Stagnation or Regeneration?;of particular interest are threetalks about the future, agendas for organization,and reflections of the disciplinary potentialfor taking control or for lapsing into irrelevance.W.N.*** А. в. MCKiixop, Contours of CanadianThought. Univ. of Toronto Press, $12.95. AsA. B. McKillop (who is also the author ofA Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiryand Canadian Thought in the Victorian Eraand the editor of A Critical Spirit: TheThought of William Dawson Lesueur) pointsout in the essays, lectures, and prefaces collectedin Contours of Canadian Thought,intellectual history as a discipline has developedwith some difficulty in Canada becausescholarly concern with the country's colonialpast seemed an admission of its dependenceand imitativeness, hence of its cultural inferiority.But, McKillop argues, "there is thenecessity to view Canada's long-held 'colonial'status as a constitutional phenomenon ratherthan a source of intellectual shame" and "todelineate neither to condemn — nor to celebrate— the contours of that past." In admirablylucid prose, these essays outline the pioneeringwork already accomplished by CarlBerger, Ramsay Cook, Richard Allen, MichielHorn, William Westfall, Allan Smith,S. E. D. Shortt, and Douglas Owram, chartingthe enormous — and fascinating — territorystill to be covered, and presenting a numberof exemplary studies demonstrating thedefinition and method of the field. There ismuch of interest here to the literary historianas well, for McKillop includes such works asEli Mandel's Contexts of Canadian CriticismOut-of-PrintCANADIANA BOOKSandPAMPHLETSHURONIA-CAN ADIANABOOKSBOX 685ALLISTON, ONTARIO LOM 1A0Catalogues free on request29З