The six novels that form the MacLennan canon explore for us, in specifically Canadian terms, a familiar pattern of the humanist's quest for an ideal society, consequent disillusionment and despair, and finally spiritual transcendence. There are striking parallels between the narrator's sense, by the end of Barometer Rising, that he is witnessing "a great country move into its destiny" and the Renaissance humanist's feeling of historic participation in rebirth from Gothic darkness. In their desire to provide an ideal literary model for Canada's development, MacLennan's early novels resemble the numerous mirrors for Christian Princes and the literary models for ideal societies written during the Renaissance. The increasingly sombre tone of the later novels is an acknowledgement that the gap between the ideal model and the actual Canada is as unbridgeable as the gap between Erasmus' "Philosophy of Christ" and the statecraft of Henry VIII. (p. 5)
MacLennan's six novels, from Barometer Rising to Return of the Sphinx, develop according to this pattern. The national odyssey of the early novels to find an ideal Canada becomes a quest for the otherworldly Celestial City. The change occurs midway in The Watch That Ends the Night and accounts for that novel's noticeable shift in tone from the detailed, realistic account of the Thirties experience at the beginning to the spiritualized conclusion in which the everyday world of Canadian life is "becoming a shadow" and politics "seemed the most unreal of all." Erasmus' comment on the need to move "through the labyrinth of this world into the pure light of the spiritual life" … forms an apt summary of the thematic movement of The Watch That Ends the Night and explains the abstractness, the detachment from action in this world, and the apocalyptic intimations that characterize Return of the Sphinx. (p. 6)
This is a free excerpt of 297 words. There are 1,001 words (approx.
3 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our MacLennan, (John) Hugh 1907–: Critical Essay by Catherine Sheldrick Ross Access Pass.
