Misdirecting Modernisms: The Gulf Between Rhetoric and Practice in Raymond Souster's Direction

Abstract

By using Raymond Souster’s little magazine, Direction (1943-46), as a case study, this thesis addresses the gulf between rhetoric and practice in the development of Canadian modernism. In the Forties, Canadian modernists argued for the importance of their form of modernism by creating little magazines that pushed a rhetoric of bold manifestos, aggressive arguments, and radical idealism that justified overturning outdated literary modes. Until recently, scholars have accepted this rhetoric as fact. They hardly questioned if the prose fiction and poetry being practiced by their writers matched desired outcomes. Additionally, they would flatten modernism’s history in Canada around a single cohesive narrative, ignoring the nuance, complexity, and confusion that actually occurred in Canada in the Forties. My objective is not to entirely invert or invalidate what has been previously written, but to identify the overlooked aspects of the magazine, and to tug at the inconsistent relationship between rhetoric and practice.