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This essay recuperates Brian Moore's mostly forgotten classic of Canadian immigrant fiction, The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960), in a reading of its protagonist as a study in the necessary self-renovation of a new Canadian. Employing the scholarly work that has been done on the Irish in Canada over the past few decades, this essay contextualizes its reading of Moore's mid-century novel in a mildly corrective history of Irish immigration to that point. Ginger Coffey will also be seen to prefigure--on the eve of Canada's officially becoming the much-admired multicultural nation it is today--the central question facing Canadians respecting immigration. The unaccommodating setting of Ginger Coffey, its historical contexts, and its compromising immigrant's (Ginger Coffey's) hard-won promise of eventual integration into Canadian society challenge readers to entertain questions about the extent of Canada's tolerance of immigrants' tenaciously mistaken dreams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul Quarrington's novel King Leary utilizes a late-life perspective in a way that questions prevailing ideals of masculinity in the culture of Canadian hockey. Leary's reminiscences of his past athletic prowess betray an abiding appreciation for forms of bodily movement associated with the feminized spheres of figure skating and dance, complicating his attempts to narrate a stable identity that conforms to the ideal of the tough, aggressive hockey player. Leary's ongoing affinity with these forms of movement suggests the possibility of sustaining his identity as an athlete into old age in a way that departs from his customary drive to dominate others. Foregrounding the body as an important site of identity in late life, the text challenges persistent cultural narratives of aging--particularly when accompanied by dementia--as a loss of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists a preconceived notion that the works of Mordecai Richler have, in francophone Quebec, been tainted by his various essays and articles on linguistic issues and nationalism; however, a review of the history of Richlerian criticism in Quebec yields a better understanding of how existing argumentative mechanisms, articulating the relationships between "us" and the nation, were only strengthened by such polemics. The runaway criticism of the 1980s and 1990s had the paradoxical effect of projecting Richler to the forefront of debates as an antagonistic figure, a role that his defenders subsequently used to attack a restrictive vision of national membership. Rather than resulting from a hybridization or meeting of cultures, the reappropriation of Richler's work by a portion of Quebec critics serves to frame a new conception of what it means to be Québécois. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is a reflection on the essays, articles, prefaces, and interviews of three contemporary anglophone writer-translators from Quebec: Philip Stratford, David Homel, and Gail Scott. Based on the premise that writer-translators maintain a privileged relationship with the space between languages and cultures, which they are bound to explore through translation and writing, the question is to determine the extent to which Stratford, Homel, and Scott have contributed to building an Anglo-Québécois identity and literature since the early 1980s. Their respective discourses on literature and translation, being symptomatic of three different intellectual approaches, reveal, on the one hand, the unstable, plurivocal, and evolving nature of this identity and literature and, on the other, a striking homology between these objects and the translation processes. It is this homology that the essay strives to emphasize. The accent is on the images of multiculturalism and forms of creativity that flow from writer-translators' knowledge of the languages-cultures with/between which they work and the modalities according to which they negotiate the difficult passage separating these two entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay revisits some of Canada's constitutional and literary history, taking as its starting point the view that the development of Canadian law and literature has been an ongoing process of national self-contemplation. It explores the disjointed nature of both projects, comparing the Privy Council's leading constitutional cases from the turn of the twentieth century with the writings of the same era's leading Canadian literary figure, Stephen Leacock. It observes that Canada's constitutional jurisprudence has historically been characterized more by its fractured quality than its rational synthesis, while its literary output has been characterized more by incompleteness and diversity than by stylistic or thematic unity. In short, it asks whether we can ever really know Mariposa—whether Canadians are capable of a coherent national discourse, or whether they are, as Robertson Davies put it, "just too divided in attitudes and feelings and climates and everything else to have a single outlook that would work in a [constitution/novel] of the whole country." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay will explore the influence of archival selection on the construction of the Canadian literary canon. The author will discuss her experience acquiring the papers of twentieth-century author and journalist Wilfrid Eggleston for Library and Archives Canada. Amongst the Eggleston material were manuscripts by his wife, Magdalena. Writing from the 1940s to the 1970s, Magdalena achieved little critical notice or publishing success. When the Eggleston fonds came to Library and Archives Canada, however, the decision was made to keep her writing as an example of an unsuccessful author's work. This essay will attempt to answer some of the questions raised by this archival selection: does Magdalena's inclusion in Library and Archives Canada's holdings, alongside such prominent authors as Robertson Davies and Carol Shields, change her importance to Canadian literature? Will she one day be "reclaimed" as a great talent by virtue of her work being archived and available for researchers? Finally, does a national heritage institution hold any responsibility in the documentation of the careers of unknown writers? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author considers literary archives in English Canada today from the points of view of writers, archivists, and scholars. The concept of creative writers as writers of intention is introduced with the suggestion that archivists should adapt archival tools to incorporate writers' intention and capture their relationship to their documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CBC Radio One's "Canada Reads," which aims to select a work of Canadian literature "that all of Canada should read together," was first broadcast as a network special in 2002. This essay undertakes an ideological analysis of the cultural work that "Canada Reads" performs, focussing on the first three series and drawing upon original interviews with the show's producers, listeners, and cultural workers. The authors conceptualize the show as both a mass reading event and a media spectacle that reinforces the "blockbuster culture" of contemporary Canadian literary publishing. They also contend that the model of nation "imagined" by the content of "Canada Reads" is problematically, if predictably, conservative (bilingual and uncritically multicultural); however, the authors position this ideological limitation against the potential for creative resistance produced by the show's multiple modes of delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the literary criticisms over the writings of women authors in Canada. Emphasis on the country landscape and populations; Concerns over the use of vernacular speech in the works; Impact of the literary works on politics; Viability of literary influences; Creation of authoritative poetry and fiction.

Focuses on the work done by the nineteenth-century Canadian writer Sara Jeannette in the 1880s. Reference to her work; Information on her novel `The Imperialist'; Background information on Duncan.

Focuses on how authors Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill represented First Nations Canadian women as `noble savages' in their works. Description on their accounts; Reference to the contents of their essays; Background information on both authors.

Opinion. Focuses on the aspect of writing and culture in the nineteenth-century Canada with reference to the scholar, Mary Lu Macdonald. Lamentation of Macdonald; Information on the authors concerns on the issue on nineteenth-century Canadian writing and culture; What do several essays provide.