There are two distinct tones discernible in The Invention of the World: one results in a powerful and apparently serious examination of history, legend, and myth in both Old World and New World contexts, a consideration of the physical, psychological, and spiritual problems of the immigrant and contemporary Canadian as types of nineteenth- and twentieth-century man; the other amounts to a burlesquing of Old and New World conventions, traditions, legends, and myths, and is satiric of the very things that in other parts of the book are looked at in a seemingly serious fashion.

Undeniably, mythic stories and archetypal patterns are a primary focus of interest in Hodgins' novel. The tale of Donal Keneally, for example, is constructed from a variety of mythic and folktale sources. (p. 106)

The Invention of the World follows an archetypal pattern in its structure, too, for it is a book of journeys…. The...