Search

This section presents a literary criticism of the 2015 novel "The Illegal," by Canadian author Lawrence Hill. Topics discussed include the publication of the novel prior to the rise of cultural and political issues concerning refugees in Canada, the way the novel addressed themes such as forced migration, Canadian humanitarian assistance, and nationalism, and the evolution and increasing recognition of Canadian refugee fiction.

The article provides an overview of Canadian fiction that challenge readers to expand their understanding of pertinent issues and contemplate new ways of telling stories. Topics include how emerging authors are experimenting with pathos and tragicomedy, theorization of romance and speculative forms, and the romanticization of analogue technology and urban settings.

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien is the property of Gesellschaft fuer Kanada Studien e.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Kanada-Studien is the property of Gesellschaft fuer Kanada Studien e.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article informs presents critical review of featured texts organized into sections on literary experiments, feminist fiction and literary short fiction. It also analyzes broader patterns in emerging Canadian fiction and suggest how texts contribute to an emerging experimentalism. It is evident that heightened thematic interest was demonstrated by authors in feminism and many writers pursued creative means to take issues associted with patriarchy.

Many scholars of contemporary Canadian literature have maintained that authors do not mark the elements of fiction with the Canadian national identity. Furthermore, they argue that contemporary authors employ predominantly American settings and characters rather than Canadian ones. As a result, they question the 'Canadianness' of contemporary Canadian fiction. This essay focuses on one of such authors, namely Douglas Coupland, and analyses his novel Shampoo Planet in order to demonstrate how it deconstructs the Canadian literary canon by the author's use of local and global settings, which are illustrated with various locations in the United States, Canada and Europe. In contrast to this critical postulate, Coupland illustrates the possibilities of a highly porous space. Through the protagonist's perspective, Coupland finally imagines a spatial representation of Canada in which national identity requires a new definition in the age of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I ask two questions of ideas of ‘North’ in Canadian national–cultural imaginaries. How does ‘North’ operate as a phantasm in these imaginaries? And what spaces of potentiality open up when the ghosts that haunt this phantasm come into view and are granted the due they demand? Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Canada's Yukon Territory and looking to the emerging field of settler colonial studies for guidance, I am asking these questions in the context of Canada as a settler colonial project. I argue that the ways that ‘North’ is infused with originary qualities and held up as emblematic of senses of Canadian selfhood places it within the structure of the phantasm in ways that work to reinforce settler colonial relations and interests. This cultural production, however, is not static or stable. It can be interrupted. It is haunted by ghosts that come into view and jam up the (seemingly) smooth narrative surface of ideas of ‘North’ in Canadian settler colonial national–cultural imaginaries. This article ends in the opening created by one such interruption at the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre in Dawson City, Yukon. In a moment of incredible courage the Tr'ondëck Hwëch'in opened their doors to a powerful exhibit titled ‘Where are the Children? Healing the Legacy of Residential Schools: Finding Our Way Home'. In so doing the ghosts that haunt ideas of ‘North’ as a scape of national–cultural originary pride come to life, unsettling this settler colonial cultural production by making visible the legacies and structures of displacement, dispossession, and violence that lay at the core of the project of Canadian nation-building. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the author's views on the Calgary Conference on the Canadian Novel, a conference on Canadian literature held from February 15-18, 1978. Various topics discussed in the conference include literary tradition of Canada, standards of Canadian novels and Canadian fiction. Authors whose literary works are discussed include Marian Engel, Robert Kroetsch and Henry Kreisel.

The article, informed by the recent work of scholars who have examined and theorized the feminization of nation-states in the context of contemporary post-colonial literary production, performs an analysis of Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game (2006) that focuses on the novel's conflations of woman and nation. The paper argues that, while Bassam, the text's narrator and protagonist, undertakes a journey toward manhood that is troubled by his country's (Lebanon's) civil unrest and violent political upheaval, he, like the text's other male characters, is and remains throughout an active subject-citizen endowed with agency. Because the same cannot be said about the female characters in De Niro's Game, the narrative ultimately illustrates that, however "in flux" Lebanon society may be, patriarchal power structures persist, rendering real women the passive objects and symbolic projections of a nation whose destiny is determined by her "sons" and "lovers." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay presents a literary critique of "The Stone Diaries," written by Carol Shields, focusing on its engagement with ambiguity surrounding the nature of truthfulness within its own narratives. Topics addressed include an introduction to the theoretical concept of "textual resistance" to reader interpretation, analysis of several passages and their use of multiple narrators and points of view, and questions interrogating the validity of literary genres as a fictional autobiography.

A literary criticism is presented on the 2005 fictional book "George & Rue," by the black Canadian author George Elliott Clarke. Particular focus is given to the intertextuality and cultural relations surrounding the book, including in regard to the influence derived from American fictional books "Native Son," by Richard Wright and "The Confessions of Nat Turner," by William Styron.

Guy Vanderhaeghe scrutinises the garrison image in the wider context of the North American West in The Englishman's Boy. His appropriation of the conventions of the Western lays bare the underpinning ideologies of the genre, especially imperialist assumptions about wilderness and the role that genre and wilderness play in American and Canadian national mythologies. His configuration of the North American West rejects the traditional idea of space as a static background for historical events. This article investigates how Vanderhaeghe rewrites the past of the North American West in spatial terms to expose the interconnection among colonialism, the Western and the national imaginary, and how such remapping presents the Western landscape as a space palimpsestically inscribed by diverse social discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Canadian Studies is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A literary criticism of the book "Fall on Your Knees" by Ann-Marie MacDonald is presented. The criticism looks at major concepts from the book including theorization of trauma through magic realism, aesthetics, and performative experience. Other topics include languages of trauma, such as music or painting, the difference between fact and truth, and multiple representations of a single traumatic event.

A literary criticism of the books "No Great Mischief," "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood," and the short story "The Closing Down of Summer" by Alistair MacLeod is presented. The criticism looks at concepts from these works including neoliberalism, realism, and regionalism. Other topics include the Maritime region of Canada, migrant laborers, and the concept of family.

A literary criticism is presented which discusses works by Georgina C. Munro and Isabella Munro, sisters and authors of Canadian literature and South African literature. It focuses on the sisters' understanding of colonial life both in Canada and the Eastern Cape, South Africa in the 19th century. Several works are discussed, including the books "The White Rose of the Huron" and "The Voyage of Life" by Georgina C. Munro and the short story "Two Nights Beside the Zwartkops" by Isabella Munro.

This essay brings to the forefront the work by Joy Kogawa that preceded and followed her watershed novel "Obasan" (1981), which privileges the perspective of a traumatized child to narrate the internment of Japanese Canadians during and after the Second World War. The objective of the essay is to address an overlooked pattern of repetition and revision that can be traced across these multiple texts—a sequel, "Itsuka / Emily Kato"; a revision for children, "Naomi's Road"; and a thematic follow-up, "The Rain Ascends"—all of which were revisited by Kogawa after their initial publication. Drawing on pivotal work on trauma and memory, the essay considers to what extent Kogawa's larger story of oppression, dispersal, and forgetting is unconcludable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This essay argues that "As for Me and My House" is very much in need of ecocritical approaches that resist the kinds of cultural marginalization that have long been a part of the Canadian experience. The essay offers a fresh approach to Ross's extensively analyzed novel, beginning with comments about the under-representedness of Canadian regional literature in the burgeoning field of ecocriticism (a field itself robustly American) and then developing a case that the distinctively Canadian context and traditions to which this slightly queer novel responds require a criticism that both differs from the American nature-celebration mode often associated with ecocriticism and addresses the novel's complex representations of social responses to sexuality and to the natural environment. Such an approach reveals that the unpredictability of the land on the one hand and the compulsions of Philip on the other share a kind of theoretical alliance; an ecocritical approach allows us to hear the silenced voices of the land and of Philip, while affirming the importance of continued readings of this very central morsel of Canadian literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aritha van Herk's writing—fiction and non-fiction—constitutes one of the defining aspects of Canadian western letters of the last 20 years. Of the multiple Wests at work in her oeuvre, her playful reimaginings of the mythic West / American Wild West (e.g., the romancing of force and violence at the celebrated Calgary Stampede chuckwagon races or her "deconstruction" of the Marlboro Man) have, however, received scant attention from critics. This article will attempt to remedy this critical oversight by exploring the representation of this mythic West as it appears in four of her most recent performance pieces and short stories: "A Fondness for the Bay" (1998), "Washtub Westerns" (2004), "Shooting a Saskatoon (Whatever Happened to the Marlboro Man?)" (2005), and "Leading the Parade" (2006). The author's purpose here is thus to examine the intersection of gender and the West in these less-studied texts, but also to use them as an inspiration for "the poetics of the crossing"—that is, the development of a specifically North American approach to Canadian literature that posits the Canadian imaginary not in deference to but in relation to the American. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses the difficulty and necessity of teaching Thomas King's 1999 novel "Truth and Bright Water." His students expect that Canadian fiction will be reflective of their experience as Canadian citizens. The author shows how King's novel meets expectations and transgresses the boundaries of genre literature. He examines various literary devices used by King, including several aporia, the metaphor of song, and the metaphor of the unfinished bridge, and points out their importance in understanding colonialism in Canadian history and culture.

The article analyzes the extensive publishing record of Canadian female author Sara Jeannette Duncan. Her novel, "The Imperialist," has been regarded as one of the most important pre-1920 Canadian novels. It is a result of the nationalistic model of Canadian literature which emerged in the 1960s. It offers a look at the bibliographic evidence of Duncan's works, including "A Social Departure." It notes that "A Social Departure" reveals the sustained study of cultural displacement at the core of Duncan's large body of fiction. the It also discusses the cosmopolitan nature of contemporary Canadian fiction and criticism.

The article written by Neta Gordon discusses genealogy and focuses on Canadian writers' recent works. It talks about genealogy in the book of Genesis and mentions the two types of genealogical lists found in the book. It traces the genealogical map in Disappearing Moon cafe, a novel by SKY Lee. It states that the recent prevalence of the genealogical genre in the works of Canadian women writers may be considered as part of the evolution in feminist literature that is more focused on context than on the subject.

The article focuses on the teaching of Robin Wood regarding the concept of a National Film Culture in Canada. Wood increased his ties to his adopted country by helping organize a highly influential retrospective on the horror film at the Toronto International Film Festival. In The Concepts of National Cinema, Andrew Higson identifies a criticism-led approach to national cinema, involving a wish to reduce national cinema to the terms of quality art cinema. Higson's observations are relevant to the discussions of Canadian cinema, particularly when one ponders the debate instigated by Bruce Elder's article The Cinema We Need. In the context of national culture, Wood enthusiastically celebrated two domestic films, "Loyalties" and "Life Classes."

Canadian literature has generally been viewed as having shifted from Victorian to Postmodern without ever having a strong modern period. However, the urban fiction of F. R. Livesay and J. G. Sime does reflect the modernist perspective. This article presents an examination of the urban fiction of F. R. Livesay and J. G. Sime. Livesay and Sime's work from the 1920s depicts the experiences of the modern city and the social and economic challanges as a result of industrialisation and urbanization.

the article presents a discussion of Canadian fiction published in 1997. Titles include "The Two-Headed Calf" by Sandra Birdsell, "If I Were Me" by Clark Blaise, and "Prozac Highway" by Persimmon Blackbridge.

The author presents an introduction to several Canadian fiction. "The English Patient," by Michael Ondaatje won two awards including the British Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Prize for the Canada/Caribbean region. "Deep Hollow Creek," by Sheila Watson depicts corruption and outsiderhood. "The Afterlife of George Cartwright," by John Steffler is a fictional biography of the 18th century figure.