1. Edward McCourt and the Prairie Myth.
- Author
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Hill, Colin
- Subjects
- *
ESSAYS , *CANADIAN fiction , *LITERARY realism , *REGIONALISM in literature , *CANADIAN literature , *LITERARY criticism , *20TH century fiction - Abstract
This essay proposes a new critical approach to modern prairie fiction through a reading of Edward McCourt's self-contradictory criticism and novels. The author re-evaluates McCourt's literary significance and locates his book, "The Canadian West in Fiction," at the beginning of a formative and enduring prairie-realist "school" of criticism with geographical, thematic, and regionalist emphases. This essay suggests that these same theses, ironically, are partly responsible for the neglect of McCourt's own significant fiction, which resists them. These established and influential theses have disconnected prairie writing from larger modern movements and its rarely acknowledged international, psychological, and experimental aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2010
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