Margaret Atwood, Lucien Goldmann's Pascal, and the Meaning of 'Canada'

Abstract

For Margaret Atwood in Survival, Canadian writers are, as well as being private people, 'transmitters of their culture.' It is possible to discern in a particular literature, presumably in any identifiable literature, 'a number of key patterns' (p 13) that distinguish it from all other literatures. Each of these patterns must occur often enough in the literature as a whole 'to make it significant: that is, to justify its inclusion in a collection of such patterns which, taken together, constitute the specific and definitive 'shape' of the literature concerned (p 13). In these assertions so far (that there are identifiable literatures that transmit cultures and that Canadian writers, in using a number of key patterns in their work, transmit the culture of which they are members) there is no assumption about the character of Canadian culture, although it is assumed that an identifiable Canadian culture exists.