SOURCE: "Beyond Realism: Raymond Knister's White Narcissus," in Studies in Canadian Literature, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1978, pp. 70-7.

In the following essay, Denham discusses the gothic and realist elements in White Narcissus.

A renewal of interest in Raymond Knister is evident in three recently published collections of his work. To date, however, White Narcissus, his only novel set in Canada and first published in 1929, has provoked little attention apart from a paperback reprint in 1962 with an introduction by Philip Child. David Arnason suggests that this neglect is probably just as well: "The novel," he writes, "will not sustain hard and sophisticated academic analysis, but it will survive it ["Preface," Journal of Canadian Fiction, 1975]. Much of the scant commentary on White Narcissus has seen it as an early experiment in realism. Desmond Pacey, for instance, links Knister with Callaghan and Grove in moving Canadian fiction away from regional and historical romance...