Narratives of Protestant Mission in Canada: The Writings of Benjamin Kohlmeister, Joshua Marsden, and Joseph Abbott, 1814-1846

The critical study of colonial literature in Canada has focussed largely on the writings of explorers, soldiers, scientific travellers, tourists, land speculators, emigrant settlers, and even artists. Comparatively little study, however, has been devoted to another Canadian traveller and writer of the period: the missionary. This thesis surveys the literary history of the Protestant missionary in Canada and examines in detail three individual texts representative of the genre of missionary writing in an attempt to describe and assess its discursive characteristics and to establish the place of the Protestant missionary writer on the Canadian literary continuum. Chapter One establishes the importance of missionary and missionary-inspired literature to the development of the Canadian literary and cultural imagination. Chapter Two introduces the reader to the history of Protestant missionary literature in Canada by exploring the three missionary societies which did the most to produce and promote it: the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Methodist Missionary Society, and the United Brethren Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel among the Heathen. Chapters Three, Four and Five offer readings of individual missionary texts: Benjamin Kohlmeister's and George Kmoch's Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay (1814), Joshua Marsden's Narrative of a Mission to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Somers Islands (1816), and Joseph Abbott's Philip Musgrave; or, the Memoirs of a Church of England Missionary in the North American colonies. (1846). The discussion of each of these texts is devoted to an introduction, biographical sketch of the author, literary and publication details, critical analysis, and conclusion. Critical readings focus on narrative strategies and methods by which the author's experience of the Canadian landscape, and its inhabitants and their manners and customs is communicated to the reader.