This Strenuous Contest

Homer, the Bible and De Mille's Strange Manuscript

By Brent Johner

I. Historiography

Few works of Canadian fiction have been subjected to such widely varying interpretations as James De Mille's enigmatic A Strange Manuscript found in a Copper Cylinder published more than a century ago. There have been, it seems, as many interpretations as there have been interpreters. J. O. Bailey, for instance, placed it within the genre of science fiction and concluded that, whatever De Mille's intentions may have been, "no satiric purpose is clear in the book." ¹ Crawford Kilian disagreed, calling it "primarily a Utopian satire." ² "Nowhere does De Mille make his purpose explicit, however;" he added with a note of caution, "it must be deduced from his ironic use of the conventions of satire and romance."

Categorizing it as a novel of ideas, George Woodcock concluded that Strange Manuscript's main theme was "an exposure of the anti-vitalist attitudes that shadowed De Mille's own world...." "When it is not merely romance," he added, "it is essentially satirical, and the satirical process is one of moral reform and not of utopian social reconstruction." ³ "The novel," John George Moss explained, "can be taken as a satire on Christianity, British society, the aristocracy, the new age of science, Darwinism, or all of these -- or something entirely else." ⁴

Yet, as Camille La Bossiere pointed out, the information gathered by Malcolm Parks showing that De Mille was active in his religion at the time Strange Manuscript appears to have been composed suggests that "religion itself ... is not the certain target of the satire." ⁵ Thus, to George Woodcock's certainty that "De Mille's purpose is not to polemicize for or against a society that does not exist, but to present a satirical view of our own world by the simple and oft-used process of inversion," Professor Malcolm Parks added a significant cautionary note: "De Mille has kept his point of view so completely hidden behind the scenes that he runs the risk of mystifying the reader or leading the critic into irresponsible interpretation." ⁶

1. James Osler Bailey, Pilgrims through Space and Time: Trends and Patterns In Scientific and Utopian Fiction, (New York: 1947), p. 65.
2. Crawford Kilian, "The Cheerful Inferno of James De Mille," in Journal of Canadian Fiction, volume 1, #3 (1972), p. 62.
3. George Woodcock, "De Mille and the Utopian Vision" in Journal of Canadian Fiction, volume 2, #3, (1973), p. 179.
4. John George Moss, A Reader's Guide to the Canadian Novel, (Toronto: 1987), p. 61.
5. Camille La Bossiere, "The Mysterious Ending of James De Mille's Unfinished Strange Manuscript" in Essays on Canadian Writing, Volume 27, (1983-84), p. 41.
6. M. G. Parks, "Strange to Strangers Only" in Canadian Literature, volume 70, (1976), p. 61.

All end notes