Page "Frank Davey" Paragraph 12

Diana Brydon begins her introduction to the Frank Davey ' festschrift issue ' of Studies in Canadian Literature: ' In 1974, Frank Davey's conference paper ' Surviving the Paraphrase ' took the small world of Canadian literary criticism by storm.

The tenor of discussion changed as writers and critics became more self-conscious about their place in the world and how they engaged it in their work.

' In her essay in this issue, Smaro Kamboureli writes ' ' Surviving the Paraphrase ,' originally presented in 1974 at the founding meeting of the association of Canadian and Quebec Literatures, and subsequently published in Canadian Literature in 1976, inaugurates a pivotal moment ... in the development of Canadian criticism, for it presents one of the earliest, albeit brief, critiques of thematic criticism in Canada.

' She adds ' If I were to identify a single major contribution Davey has made to Canadian critical discourse, this would be the instrumental role he has played in showing the importance of methodology, that methodology is inextricably related to how we understand the canon, textuality, the critical act, and nation-formation.

The fact that he drew attention to method at a time when Canadian literary discourse was by and large oblivious to it makes his contribution all the more important.

Method – directly thematized or appearing in different guises – figures in his work with remarkable consistency and with interesting results.