LITERATURA CANADENSE

1. In which terms do Northdrop Frye and Margaret Atwood conceive “garrison mentality”?

In 1971, Northdop Frye suggested that Canadian culture had a mindset of trim or defense. This 'garrison mentality' is understood as a consequence of the severe environment faced by early settlers and Canadians, beside a way to rationalize acts of aggression committed by imperial European . Margaret Atwood gave a redefinition to the garrison mentality as a form of survival of Canadians, and literature became a way to define national identity. The characters in Canadian literature play the role of victim, and may have one of four positions of victim proposed by Atwood who are: the denial of the status of victim, the victim recognition and consequent attribution to any bigger force, the recognition of victim and refusal of role or even the position of ex victim, where the creativity becomes a way of purging victimization. This notion of 'survival' Atwood is directly tied to the notion of 'garrison mentality' Frye, towards a position of uncertainty about Canadian national identity.

2. How do critics have been reacting to the concept of garrison mentality as a related to Canadian literature?

When Margaret Atwood and other writers looked for a Canadians, identity in the canadian writings, to make her rich and distinct from other countries, critics thought that the identity found by the group decreased the Canadian literature and was not dealt with the entire Canadian literature, was only compatible with a small part of the writings. And although they unstimulated the identity found in the texts, concepts and ideas suggested by Northdop Frye and later by Atwood, had already disseminated .

3. Garrison, fort, fortress, do not exist any longer as they did at the time of the first settlers, so how can we still acknowledge the suppose text garrison mentality in the literature and culture of present Canada?

At the beginning of Canadian colonization the garrison mentality happened because the settlers did not have conditions they deal with wild nature around them and so that they could keep the habits and customs of Europe, later, the religious division, political and cultural provided by the French and British colonization made the country continued to fear the "outside". Another fact that contributed to the isolation Canadian is the geography of the country. According to Frye, each region is separated by some natural formation that prevents the close relations between two places. Moreover, the fort no longer exist, values and social group are already inherent to the Canadian people. People are always on alert, fearing an attack from outside. In the literature, garrison mentality is felt today more as a mentality, sensitivity intrinsic to the Canadian people than actually like themes in the canadian writings.

4. According to this text’s author, how do poems and poets echo or display garrison mentality?

In texts that garrison mentality appears, the characters are always looking out and building metaphorical walls against the outside world. This mentality seems to assume that part of the Canadian identity fearing the Canadian landscape as something wild and dangerous and fear of oppression of other nations. Although the poems do not address specifically the question of isolation,

...