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The Bush Garden
Author	Northrop Frye
Cover artist	Hilary Norman
Language	English
Subject	Canadian literature and art
Publisher	House of Anansi
Publication date	1971
Publication place	Canada
Pages	256 + x
ISBN	978-0-88784-620-5
LC Class	71-152412

The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination is a collection of essays by Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye (1912–1991). The collection was originally published in 1971; it was republished, with an introduction by Canadian postmodern theorist Linda Hutcheon, in 1995. The Bush Garden features analyses of Canadian poetry, prose fiction and painting. According to Frye's introduction, the essays were selected to provide a composite view of the Canadian imagination, an understanding of the human imagination's reaction to and development in response to the Canadian environment.

The Bush Garden includes an edited version of Frye's "Conclusion" to Carl F. Klinck’s Literary History of Canada. In this work, Frye articulated his theory of "garrison mentality" as the defining characteristic of Canadian literature. Garrison mentality is the attitude of a community that feels isolated from cultural centres and besieged by a hostile landscape. Frye maintained that such communities were peculiarly Canadian, and fostered a literature that was formally immature, that displayed deep moral discomfort with “uncivilized” nature, and whose narratives reinforced social norms and values^[1]

Criticism

Although Frye asserted that his picture of Canadian self-image was unique to Canada, the picture of a civilization, led by patrilineal founders and establishing itself within a hostile or potentially hostile landscape, is in fact a recurring theme of the foundation myths told by a wide variety of cultures about themselves.