New Canadian Criticism

These essays explore the troubling relationship between narrative meaning and representations of violence within Findley's novels. Although Findley clearly admires the modernist texts which appear in his own fiction, his novels also reveal how the modernist search for metaphoric unity and meaning in the face of real social and political fragmentation often reflects an aesthetic akin to that of fascism.

Margaret Atwood's writing, according to Davey, reveals not only an extraordinary facility with language, but also a deep mistrust of it as something shaped by an instrumental and largely male culture. Her language directs its readers to a hidden level of itself – unspoken, symbolic, gestural – and away from denotative meaning.

The first book-length, critical study of George Bowering explores the relationship between his work and the arts.