Myth and identity. Essays on canadian literature

The works examined in the following essays have a number of features in common other than the obvious fact that they were all written by Canadians. The most significant, in my view, is that indicated in my title, which is a deliberately loose formula intended to accommodate the different manifestations of a concern that recurs, in various guises and with varying degrees of thematic intensity, in all of the works under discussion. All more or less explicitly address the problem of personal identity in its relation with those social definitions of the self which, not without ample precedent, I am here calling mythology. And all explore the implications of this problem by treating it at a strategic remove from the immediate Canadian context which imparts to it its peculiar urgency.