In this survey and analysis of long poems written about Canada between 1690 and 1900, D.M.R. Bentley establishes literary contexts for a greatly neglected period of Canadian literature. He also provides critical discussions of the poems, addresses larger questions of tradition and intertextuality, and demonstrates the existence of a continuity in Canadian writing from the colonial to the post-colonial period.

Life hasn't suddenly become easy because Raneh's now the Keeper. Her life has been interrupted, and she struggles to pick up the pieces. The world has been interrupted, too. Magic no longer functions, and the food, travel, and health it provided have also vanished. There's nothing to help except the new system Raneh created, and nobody knows how to use it. Teaching it will be the work of a lifetime. Work that Raneh's willing to do. But the Ruler has a very different idea of what a Keeper should be doing.

His analysis reveals the extent to which problems of allegiance, anxiety, and identity were inextricably involved in the colonial and national projects, an involvement which the poetry, despite its intentions, could neither mask nor resolve.