| Summary: | The early Canadian long poem has often been faulted for its lack of aesthetic integrity, being seen in many cases as little more than poorly "versified rhetoric," but it has never been submitted to a thorough rhetorical analysis. An investigation of the rhetorical devices at work in the early Canadian long poem, however, reveals them to be highly strategic operations of both the imperial-colonial project in British North America and the emerging national consciousness of the new nation of Canada. These operations may be understood more clearly through the close examination of periodic "ruptures" in the texts--inconsistencies, contradictions, anomalies, and deflections--which underscore the frequently conflictual nature of the "unsaid" (the real historical, economic and social conditions) and the surface level of the narrative (the aesthetic and generic constraints). Such an analysis reveals the extent to which the problems of allegiance, anxiety and identity were inextricably involved in the colonial and national projects, an involvement which the poetry, despite its intentions, could neither mask nor resolve.
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