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There has been an exile of literature from the English as a second language curriculum. Language is a small part of the communication that takes place in a culture. Cultural complexities in literature are valuable for the teaching of second language students. Teaching suggestions and references are provided. (SW)

This digital book is a companion to Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence: Restoring the Voice of Edward Taylor Fletcher to Nineteenth-Century Canadian Literature. It is intended as an aid to readers, in particular students and scholars, who wish to know more about Fletcher's works. The ideas that drove Fletcher's creative works are on display here, but they are not in the form of memoir, travel writings, or poetry — instead, these are the critical writings of an amateur scholar and professional surveyor. They frequently fall into the philological habits of the nineteenth century, and they do not generally "tell a story" as do the creative works that comprise Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence. However, many of these non-fiction essays relate directly to Fletcher's creative writing, such as his "The Lost Island of Atlantis" to his long poem The Lost Island. Likewise, for scholarly interest, the works collected here reveal the readings Fletcher gestures to in his creative works: gestures that are largely confined to the annotations in Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence but that form his central concerns here.

Mary Shelley’s iconic Frankenstein is a pivotal work in the Western canon. Since its publication in 1818, the novel has been re-written and adapted many times. Shelley’s magnum opus sublimely evokes the postlapsarian condition of the fallen, while also capturing the imminent fear of technology, scientific progress and artificial procreation. The paper aims to explore the Frankenstein legacy and the development of Frankensteinian motifs in Atwood’s speculative fiction. More precisely, the paper focuses on The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The MaddAddam Trilogy – Oryx and Crake (2003), The Year of the Flood (2009), MaddAddam (2013), and The Heart Goes Last (2015), analyzing how postmodern literature recycles and incorporates elements from Frankenstein to reflect (on) contemporary anxieties and to insist on the fluid discursivity of monstrosity.

"The dedication of this special issue to the memory and works of E.D. Blodgett is most befitting following his demise in 2018. A thorough and chronological survey of the multiple collections of Blodgett’s poetry, his translations, and his vast scholarly contributions to the fields of literary studies, in general, and Canadian literature and comparative literature, in particular, warrants another dedicated volume. The current issue is a response to the call to bring together scholarship that is either entirely based on Blodgett’s creative and scholarly works, or else on works that reference his contributions to Canadian and world literatures."

Margaret Atwood is undoubtedly the most popular Canadian author in Slovenia, with eight novels translated into Slovene. Although this prolific author also writes short fiction, poetry, children’s books, and non-fiction, these remain unknown to Slovene readers, at least in their own language. Atwood has published as many poetry collections as novels, but her poetry is inaccessible in Slovene, with the exception of some thirty poems that were translated and published in literary magazines between 1999 and 2009. The article provides an overview of Atwood’s poetry volumes and the main features of her poetry, as well as a detailed overview of Atwood’s poems that have appeared in Slovene translation, with the names of translators, titles of poetry collections, dates of publication, and names of literary magazines. This is the first such overview of Slovene translations of Atwood’s poetry. Additionally, the article offers an insight into some stylistic aspects of Atwood’s poetry that have proven to be particularly challenging for translation.

Over the course of less than a decade, Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing (2006), was translated into French three different times. The poetry collection of Cohen was first translated in Québec (Livre du constant désir, 2007) and then in France (Le livre du désir, 2008). In addition, seven poems published in Book of Longing previously appeared as songs on the studio album Ten New Songs (2001). The French release of this album was accompanied by a promotional booklet, in which French translations (made by Graeme Allwright) are printed. In this article, the question is raised whether these texts can be labeled as ‘retranslations’ or not. The three translations will first be compared in order to determine to what extent several power mechanisms have influenced the production of these translations, namely the dynamics between centre and periphery (Paris and Québec) and between highbrow-lowbrow cultural products (literature and music). These external factors will then be compared to a number of internal factors, i.e. a specific interpretation of Cohen’s poetry that may have influenced the adopted translation strategies of the three texts under consideration. Resumo Em menos de uma década, o Book of Longing [Livro do desejo] de Leonard Cohen (2006) foi traduzido para o francês três vezes. A coleção de poemas de Cohen foi primeiramente traduzida no Québec (Livre du constant désir, 2007), e então na França (Le livre du désir, 2008). Além disso, sete poemas do Book of Longing apareceram previamente como canções no álbum Ten New Songs [Dez novas canções] (2011). O lançamento francês do álbum foi acompanhado por um libreto promocional, no qual foram impressas traduções para o francês (feitas por Graeme Allwright). Neste artigo, pergunta-se se estes textos podem ser tachados como retraduções ou não. As três traduções serão inicialmente comparadas, para se determinar até que ponto diferentes mecanismos de poder influenciaram a produção destas traduções, a saber: a dinâmica entre centro e periferia (Paris e Québec), e entre produtos de alta e baixa cultura (literatura e música). Estes fatores externos serão então comparados a um certo número de fatores internos, i.e. a interpretação específica da poesia de Cohen que pode ter influenciado as estratégias tradutórias do três textos sob consideração.

This article examines Canadian author Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s 2004 memoir Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown through the notions of marginalia and the ordinary in order to question dichotomic representations of homelessness. It explores how the author moves beyond binaries, interrogating the dichotomy ordinary/out of the ordinary lives by narrating his ethical encounter with the other (Butler, 2004). The text is written as a journal where Bishop-Stall describes his personal journey through homelessness; and more importantly, it gives a voice to the other down-and-out people in notorious Toronto’s Tent City. The characters’ unreliable and fragmented storytelling uncovers the lives of the faceless others. I contend that in Down to This individuals’ life stories are connected to realities which question binaries through the re/mapping of ordinary experiences and affects; they disintegrate the opposition materiality vs abstraction, or as I argue, exclusion vs inclusion (out of the ordinary/ordinary). Down to These bridges the private details of the residents’ life stories, and the public perception of the problem of homelessness, illustrating how everyday moments of precarity intersect with wider political issues. In the process, the narrative also questions the binary attitudes of exclusion (disfranchisement) and inclusion (privilege). This literary strategy gives the constellation of stories a profound illuminating vision of the human condition. I show my point by drawing on the of marginalia (Kistner 2014), and by analysing the characters’ narratives of precariousness through the notions of editing and affective assemblage (Gerlach, 2015; Hamilakis, 2017). This work was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2015- 63895-C2-1-R).

Margaret Atwood is the only Canadian author whose 80th birthday in 2019 was cel-ebrated by the global academic community This is not surprising, as she is the most famous Canadian writer, popular also outside literary circles On this occasion, Slovene Canadianists organized a literary event at the Maribor University Library, which presented an outline of Atwood’s oeuvre and a selection of translated poems and excerpts of prose texts;some of these were translated especially for the event Of Atwood’s rich and varied oeuvre, only eight novels, a few short fiction pieces and some thirty poems have been translated into Slovene This article thus aims at presenting those aspects of Atwood’s work which are less know to Slovene readers It is no secret that Atwood is often labelled a feminist writer, mostly on account of The Handmaid’s Tale and the TV series based on the novel However, many Slovene readers may not know that she also writes poetry, short fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature, that she is a committed environmentalist, and that she discussed the problem of “Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth” in a prestigious lecture series There are not many authors who master as many genres as Atwood and who are so well-received by readers and critics alike The latter is true of Atwood also in Slovenia, and we can only hope that Slovene publishers will make more of Atwood’s work available to Slovene readers All the more so since Atwood has no plans to end her career: just before her 80th birthday she was on a tour in Europe promoting her latest novel, The Testaments, and she would have continued touring in 2020 were it not for the COVID pandemic © 2020, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts All rights reserved

The numerous books of the poet Al Purdy (1918–2000) are well known to readers of modern Canadian literature. His extensive archives conceal many unnoticed works, however, and the true extent of his literary career can only be seen when the unpublished writing is brought into view. A manuscript from the early 1960s – “Yehl the Raven and Other Creation Myths of the Haida” – illustrates the importance of the archives to studies of his life and works. The obscure sequence of poems demonstrates Purdy’s ethnographic interests and represents a point of contact between modern Canadian literature and mid-century anthropology. It also shows Purdy to have been engaged, for a time, in a manner of writing that was largely distinct from the autobiographical, anecdotal mode that typifies the poetry on which his reputation rests. He wrote his “Creation Myths” by adapting narratives found in the studies of Marius Barbeau (1883–1969), the Canadian folklorist and ethnographer. He attempted to publish the resultant poems as a short book, but “Yehl the Raven” never appeared in print, and although the manuscript has not been utterly invisible to Purdy’s colleagues and critics, it has been mischaracterized, unappreciated, and essentially overlooked. Nor have its origins and virtual disappearance yet been explained. This brief essay consequently examines the manuscript and suggests why it merits critical attention.

Harpoon of the Hunter, originally written in Inuktitut syllabics and published serially in 1969/70, is frequently characterized as the “first Inuit novel” (McGrath 1984, 81; Chartier 2011). It was deemed the “breakthrough” (McNeill 1975, 117) eagerly awaited by those whose stated goal was to save Canada’s traditional northern culture and its stories, songs, poems and legends from being swept aside by the onslaught of southern modernity. Markoosie’s text helpfully allows discussion of (post)colonial contact zones constructed in and through translational acts such as self-translation, retranslation, and relay/indirect translation as these intersect with Indigenous literature. This article explores the complex trajectory, involving various stakeholders, of the translation, circulation and reception of this important contribution to not only Inuit literature, but Canadian literature as a whole. It examines some relevant features of the author’s own translation of his text into English (1970) and traces them through the two existing French translations by Claire Martin (Markoosie, tr. Martin 1971) and Catherine Ego (Markoosie, tr. Ego 2011).

Novels from the Dear Canada series of historic fiction, published by Scholastic Canada, currently populate the shelves of school classrooms and libraries across Canada. This study explores two Dear Canada novels that chronicle significant moments in Atlantic Canadian history: Janet McNaughton’s novel (Flame and ashes: The great fire diary of Triffie Winsor. St. Johns, Newfoundland, 1892, Scholastic Canada, Toronto, 2014) which explores the Great Fire of Newfoundland in 1892, and Julie Lawson’s novel, No Safe Harbour (No safe harbour: the Halifax explosion diary of Charlotte Blackburn, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1917, Scholastic Canada, Toronto, 2006), which explores the Halifax Explosion of 1917. Kenneth Kidd (Child Lit 33: 120–149, 2005) notes that “subjects previously thought too upsetting for children are now deemed appropriate and even necessary” in children’s literature (p. 12); indeed, the themes of both Flame and Ashes and No Safe Harbour resonate with recent attempts to represent broader and more diverse ranges of experiences in children’s fiction. Like many other texts in the series, these texts explore economic hardship and psychological distress. Furthermore, they explore events through the eyes of subjects who have, historically, had very little agency: female children. Drawing on narrative theory and feminist standpoint theory (Fuller in Writing the everyday: women’s textual communities in Atlantic Canada, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2004), this study examines the narrative techniques McNaughton and Lawson rely on to counterbalance difficult historical events with the appeal of young protagonists who offer subjective responses to the historical moment. This study considers both the ideological challenges and the possible advantages of circulating historical knowledge that is linked to girlhood and profoundly rooted in place. Ultimately, I argue that these young female narrators provide important inroads for interrogating what counts as history in historical narratives.

This article explores the interconnections between young adult fiction and young adult readers’ constructions of place within two contemporary texts. It employs a qualitative, multiple case study design, and utilizes discussion groups, semi-structured interviews, and the creation of place-journals to interpret some of the ways in which several young adult readers, from two contrasting Canadian communities (rural/urban), respond to how place and place-identity are construed within two young adult fiction texts: Tim Wynne-Jones’ Blink and Caution and Clare Vanderpool’s Moon Over Manifest. Drawing on geography theory and ecocriticism, it argues that the participants’ interpretations of place align with the theories of place put forth by cultural geographer Doreen Massey and ecocritic Lawrence Buell. In doing so, it illustrates how the participants reflected on place, inside and outside of the chosen texts, as geographers and ecocritics would have done. The methodological approach moves beyond strictly textual analysis to privilege the voices of adolescent Canadian readers, positioning them as critical interpreters of place.

In 2014, the Quebecois writer Catherine Mavrikakis published Diamanda Galas, a tribute to the American artist performer of Greek origin, Diamanda Galas – at the Montreal Publishing House, Héliotrope, inaugurating a new collection, “Guerrières et Gorgones” (Warriors and Gorgons). At the same time and in the same collection, Martine Delvaux published a tribute to the American photographer Nan Goldin, in an eponymous essay. “What survives from/through artists who are prophets of the contemporary?”, inquires Mavrikakis. Acting on the tragedy of history and transgressing it, how can literature and art play with experiences of memory transmission and “survival” without necessarily working “to fix” them? What is at the heart of this link between history and creativity, reaffirmed by Georges Didi-Huberman in Survivance des lucioles? Through reflections on transcultural transference, multiculturalism and the power of women to transgress traumatic experiences, this article explores the question of memory transmission in two contemporary narratives on art and the AIDS period of the 1980s. Résumé En 2014, l’écrivaine québécoise Catherine Mavrikakis publie Diamanda Galas, un récit hommage à l’artiste musicienne américaine d’origine grecque, Diamanda Galas, aux éditions Héliotrope à Montréal, inaugurant une nouvelle collection intitulée “Guerrières et Gorgones” À la même époque et dans la même collection, une autre écrivaine québécoise, Martine Delvaux, publie un récit hommage à la photographe américaine contemporaine Nan Goldin. “Quel culte peut-on porter aux artistes prophètes du contemporain ?”, interroge Mavrikakis. En puisant dans le tragique de l’époque du SIDA des années 1980 pour tenter de le transgresser, la littérature peut-elle transmettre des expériences traumatiques et de “survivance” sans se donner pour but de les “régler”? Et quel lien entre histoire, créativité et mémoire, tel qu’évoqué par Georges Didi-Huberman dans Survivance des lucioles ? Par des réflexions sur le transculturel, le multiculturalisme et la force des femmes à passer au-delà des traumas personnels et collectifs, nous explorons la question de la transmission de la mémoire dans la littérature contemporaine canadienne en nous attachant à deux récits publiés récemment au Québec. Resumo Em 2014, a escritora quebequense Catherine Mavrikakis publica Diamanda Galas, uma narrativa em homenagem à artista e musicista americana de origim grega, Diamanda Galas, pela editora Héliotrope de Montréal, inaugurando uma nova coleção intitulada “Guerrières et Gorgones”. Na mesma época e na mesma coleção, outra escritora quebequense, Martine Delvaux, publica uma narrativa em homenagem à fotógrafa americana contemporânea Nan Goldin. “Que culto podemos reservar aos artistas profetas da contemporaneidade?”, interroga-se Mavrikakis. Insperando-se no trágico da época da AIDS dos anos 1980 para tentar transgredi-lo, a literatura poderá transmitir experiências traumáticas e de “sobrevivência” sem ter a finalidade “regulá-las”? E qual o vínculo entre história, criatividade e memória, tal como foi evocado por Georges Didi-Huberman em Survivance des lucioles? Através das reflexões sobre o transcultural, o multiculturalismo e a força das mulheres em passar além dos traumas pessoais e coletivos, exploramos a questão da transmissão da memória na literatura contemporânea canadense tendo por base essas duas narrativas recentemente publicadas no Quebec.

Magistrsko delo obravnava pomen in rabo hrane v izbranih delih kanadskih pisateljic Alice Munro in Margaret Atwood. V analizo sta zajeta dva romana Atwoodove, in sicer The Edible Woman in Lady Oracle (Preročišče), Alice Munro pa je znana kot avtorica kratkih zgodb, zato analiza njenih del zajema deset kratkih zgodb iz treh različnih zbirk: Too Much Happiness (Preveč sreče), Who do You Think You Are? in The View from Castle Rock (Pogled z grajske pečine). Prvi del magistrske naloge obravnava raznolike vloge, ki jih ima hrana v vsakdanjem življenju. S pomočjo znanstvenih člankov, literarnih esejev, doktorskih disertacij in konferenčnih prispevkov je hrana v tem delu razdeljena na štiri ključna področja oziroma kategorije: i) hrana kot orodje nege, skrbi in seksualnosti, ii) hrana kot del zahodne kulture, iii) hrana kot pomembna sestavina družabnih dogodkov ter iv) hrana kot izraz moči in nadzora. V povezavi z nego in skrbjo je hrana obravnavana predvsem skozi dojenje, materinsko skrb ter socializacijo žensk, ki stremi k skrbi za druge. Pri seksualnosti se preučuje ustvarjanje erotičnega vzdušja, zapeljevanje s pomočjo hrane ter seksualna konotacija različnih prehranskih izdelkov. Znotraj kategorije hrane kot sestavine zahodne kulture so izpostavljeni problemi oglaševanja, ki ustvarjajo pritisk, povezan s telesno samopodobo posameznika, ter vplivajo na negativno dojemanje debelosti. Na kratko je predstavljeno tudi razlikovanje med tipično moško (meso) in žensko (zelenjava) hrano, izpostavljen pa je tudi vpliv hrane na razvrščanje ljudi glede na njihov socialni status. Pri kategoriji, ki se osredotoča na hrano kot element družabnih dogodkov, je preučevana vloga obrokov pri ustvarjanju družinske dinamike, vzdrževanju ritualov ter družbenega reda. Različni družabni dogodki, povezani s hrano (na primer slavnostne večerje, zabave s koktajli ali družinski pikniki), namreč namigujejo na različne stopnje bližine. Izpostavljena je vloga skupnih obrokov, ki utrjujejo skupinsko pripadnost ter spodbujajo upoštevanje pravil ta služijo tudi kot sredstvo discipliniranja posameznika. Znotraj zadnje kategorije, ki preučuje vlogo hrane kot izraz moči, je pozornost osredotočena na razmerja med spoloma, razdelitev nalog (na primer, kdo pripravlja hrano, kdo plača večerjo, kje kdo sedi) ter moč družbenega pritiska, ki vpliva na oba spola in utrjuje sledenje tradicionalnim družbenim vlogam v kuhinji. The main objective of this master's thesis is to analyse and compare the meaning and use of food in selected prose fiction by two Canadian writers Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. The thesis presents an analysis of ten short stories by Alice Munro and two novels by Margaret Atwood. These are analysed in four categories related to food. Food as a tool of nurture, care and sexuality the cultural aspect of food food as an important ingredient of social events and food as an expression of power present the main frameworks for our analysis. The findings suggest that the meaning and use of food in literature offer a great potential to a complete understanding of characters, the relationship among them and their motifs. This thesis provides an insight into the meaning and use of food in selected prose fiction and the differences between categories in depicting a variety of social, cultural and interpersonal challenges that contribute to the narration of the story. It was assumed that the meaning and use of food will correspond to the four main categories of food in literature and that sexuality, gender relation, and power will be predominant topics.

Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy has met with popular acclaim and generated considerable scholarly interest since the 2003 publication of its first volume, Oryx and Crake. The implicit critique of Western capitalism presented in Atwood’s dystopian vision of a post-democratic, post-national, and post-human future seems to offer a wide appeal, particularly at a time of sustained environmental crisis. Instead of evaluating the merits of Atwood’s critique, however, this paper examines the ways in which the speculative future of Oryx and Crake and the warnings it contains are delimited by a problematic Second World paradigm. More specifically, the novel can be read in terms of the wild animal story, a genre first established in late-nineteenth-century Canada that Atwood herself was instrumental in defining as such in her controversial 1972 study Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. In keeping with the conventions of the wild animal story, boundary crossings in Atwood’s novel engage in indigenizing fantasy. Despite its powerful warning of imminent disaster, Oryx and Crake nevertheless obscures ongoing colonializing acts by privileging a settler subject-position conceived as endangered by the forces of modernity