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 accomplished, prolific, and influential essayist who…
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Citation: Hill, Colin. "Hugh MacLennan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 April 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2865, accessed 24 November 2024.]
