Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence: Restoring the Voice of Edward Taylor Fletcher to Nineteenth-Century Canadian Literature

Edward Taylor Fletcher was a nineteenth-century literary figure who wrote a unique Canadian long poem that integrated allusions and innovations from several different literary traditions, exploring content, style, and concerns unlike the popular colonial narratives of his time.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 220 pages
Publication date: 08 April 2022
Publisher: AU Press

Edward Taylor Fletcher, a prominent literary figure of the 19th century, has largely been overlooked by history. A versatile writer, he excelled as a poet, travel writer, essayist, surveyor, philologist, and translator. Fletcher shared many similarities with renowned literary figures of his era, yet his writing stood out as a departure from his contemporaries. A thorough examination of his work reveals a profound shift in our understanding of the Canadian long poem and the cultural values embedded within Canadian poetry.

Fletcher possessed a remarkable linguistic proficiency, fluently speaking English, French, German, Italian, and several other modern languages. He also delved into the study and translation of literary works in languages such as Icelandic, Finnish, Polish, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, among others. His poetry seamlessly merged Canadian landscapes with contemporary and ancient traditions from the East and West, incorporating allusions and innovations from diverse literary traditions, including the Kalavela, the Mahabharata, and the Poetic Edda. Through the recovery and exploration of Fletcher's 19th-century works, James Gifford unveils a distinctive Canadian literary voice that ventured into uncharted territories of content, style, and societal concerns, diverging from the prevalent colonial narratives of his time.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781771993449