The Missionary Position: The American Roots of Northrop Frye’s Peaceable Kingdom

Abstract

Key to Canada’s attractiveness internationally is its characterization as a “peaceable kingdom,” a term famously used by Canadian scholar Northrop Frye in 1965 to articulate what makes Canada distinctive. In the conclusion to Literary History of Canada, Frye uses his reading of American folk art to put forth the concept of Canada as on “a quest for the peaceable kingdom,” citing works by two men (Erastus Salisbury Field’s Historical Monument of the American Republic and Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom) whose religious convictions also fundamentally shaped their artistic output to frame his argument. Through a closer examination of these canvases, the article explores how Frye’s idea of the peaceable kingdom is shaped by American religions and their missionary traditions—specifically Quakers and Methodists—and the historical flow of these religions across the Canada-US border, in combination with the influx of Loyalists northward and the subsequent commitment to missions that was part of British, American, and Canadian society. The American roots of Frye’s peaceable kingdom serve as a tangible reminder that borders are porous, and that those origins need to be acknowledged as a critical part of Canada’s self-construction.