Description
Book SynopsisScraps, tags, figments of the United Empire Loyalist heritage dot the Ontario landscape. Something of Loyalism lies in the very Ontario air and pervades the imagination of its people.
In Gardens, Covenants, Exiles, Dennis Duffy sets out to describe and analyse the effects of Loyalism on the literary culture of Ontario. He explores the enduring nature of an attitude of mind whose historical origins lie in the Loyalist settlements in the forests of Upper Canada. No single source can explain a culture's characteristic way of viewing moral, social, and literary matters. This study, however, reveals how one historical event and the mythology it engendered have helped to shape a province and its literature.
The collective experience of the Loyalists underlies Ontario's view of the Canadian destiny. Their defeat, exile, endurance, and their final mastery of a new land confirmed their belief that their own destiny lay within a larger imperial framework. But t
