Hugh MacLennan

Colin Hill (University of Toronto)
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Many consider Hugh MacLennan Canada's first major contemporary writer, and the attention critics, readers, and the media paid to him at the height of his career was unprecedented in Canada. He won Canada's most prestigious literary prize, the Governor General's Award, five times, a feat no other author has achieved. The fact that he wrote ambitious novels about national identity as Canadian cultural nationalism was growing and peaking made his name for a time synonymous with Canadian literature as a whole. His novels are written, for the most part, in a traditional, straightforward and realistic style, and foreground ideas and theses about Canadian society, politics, and nationhood from a nationalistic perspective. MacLennan was also an …

2342 words

Citation: Hill, Colin. "Hugh MacLennan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 April 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2865, accessed 28 March 2024.]

2865 Hugh MacLennan 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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