The Light Candling the Mind: A Journey Across Canadian Literature

This book is the third book of CanLit essays published by QuodSermo Publishing by Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias. In the preface, the PhD professor Guillermo Ronda says:

The book consists of review essay on contemporary Canadian authors. The extensive literary and academic production of Professor Miguel Olivé is remarkable. Since 2018 he has authored, coauthored, edited, coedited, reviewed, revised or translated almost forty titles for various Publishers in Canada. I have been reading his publications since then, pleased that his sources of inspiration, his fortitude and his committed intellect have allowed him to overcome serious health problems and go on writing, leaving in print or electronically excellent material for the Canadian cultural mosaic.

I wrote about his first two books of reviews and essays. It was only logical, and an honor for me, he would ask me, as a friend and colleague, to comment on his new book. I am more than privileged to do so, more than thrilled to speak about what has been a forever passion in Professor Olivé. He has compiled and harmonized in a single volume a large group of authors and books, covering from 1997 up to 2024 (plus a 19th-century classic, Pickthall, to open the book, and a contemporary icon, Crozier, to close it). Different publishers, styles, eyes, perspectives, themes, passions, moods, wordings-lives, have been invited to the book's pages. They give spirit, sense and future to the aspirations that the inveterate lovers of literature have always had.In a feat of democracy, Professor Olivé brings together poetry, prose and image crafted by high-standing, established writers/artists and also by a promising list of men and women whose works follow in on the footsteps of the greats, and aim at continuing and improving their creative urges. I am impressed by Olivé's working capacity and passion in what he does. He has always claimed that he loves teaching, but we see too a teacher who has found his second cup of tea. Olivé writes and publishes his academic papers, his own poetry and prose, yet supported and encouraged by Richard Grove (the book's publisher), he has discovered this new vein of creativity and has been writing reviews and essays almost around-the-clock.

I revel in his fever and his devotion. I sing to his unending search for more and more authors to write about, in his generous concept of praising what they do because the act of writing is rewarding but also demanding. As he has said, he leaves the task of thorough literary criticism to specialists, who know more than he does about the circuitous trails of that job. For now, relish Professor Olivé's The Light Candling the Mind: A Journey across Canadian Literature. It is a truly felt journey of celebration and love, of acknowledgment and tribute.