Revealing reciprocity: Anne Wilkinson, Northrop Frye, and mythopoetics in Canada

While Anne Wilkinson was recognized as a highly talented and sophisticated poet during her lifetime, her contributions to the mythopoeic movement which emerged in mid-century Toronto has been largely ignored. By exploring the resonances and reciprocities between Wilkinson's mythopoetics and Northrop Frye's myth criticism, which served as a central point of connection and inspiration for the mythopoeic group, this project firmly places her within the Canadian mythopoeic tradition. At the same time, it reveals how Frye's myth criticism sprung not only out of ancient myth and poetry, but out of a living and growing tradition which surrounded him during his career in Toronto. This thesis also proposes the necessity of a larger study examining how and why what Frye terms the third great mythopoeic age emerged in mid-century Toronto, and how the poets involved worked to create a coherent mythopoeic culture of letters.