Reappraisals: Canadian Writers

Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination begins with the premise, first suggested by Margaret Atwood in The Animals in That Country (1968), that animals have occupied a peculiarly central position in the Canadian imagination. Unlike the longer-settled countries of Europe or the more densely-populated United States, in Canada animals have always been the loved and feared co-inhabitants of this harsh, beautiful land. From the realistic animal tales of Charles G. D. Roberts and Ernest Thompson Seton, to the urban animals of Marshall Saunders and Dennis Lee, to the lyrical observations of bird enthusiasts John James Audubon, Thomas McIlwraith, and Don McKay, animals have occupied a key place in Canadian literature, focusing central aspects of our environmental consciousness and cultural symbolism. Other Selves explores how and what the animals in this country have meant through all genres and periods of Canadian writing, focusing sometimes on individual texts and at other times on broader issues. Tackling more than a century of writing, from 19th-century narrative of women travellers, to the "natural" conversion of Grey Owl, to the award-winning novels of Farley Mowat, Marian Engel, Timothy Findley, Barbara Gowdy, and Yann Martel, these essays engage the reader in this widely-acknowledged but inadequately-explored aspect of Canadian literature.

If one poet can be said to be the Canadian poet, that poet is Al Purdy (1918—2000). Numerous eminent scholars and writers have attested to this pre-eminent status. George Bowering described him as "the world's most Canadian poet" (1970), while Sam Solecki titled his book-length study of Purdy The Last Canadian Poet (1999). In The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al Purdy, a group of seventeen scholars, critics, writers, and educators appraise and reappraise Purdy's contribution to English literature. They explore Purdy's continuing significance to contemporary writers; the life he dedicated to literature and the persona he crafted; the influences acting on his development as a poet; the ongoing scholarly projects of editing and publishing his writing; particular poems and individual books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction; and the larger themes in his work, such as the Canadian North and the predominant importance of place. In addition, two contemporary poets pay tribute with original poems.

Canadian literature, and specifically the teaching of Canadian literature, has emerged from a colonial duty to a nationalist enterprise and into the current territory of postcolonialism. From practical discussions related to specific texts, to more theoretical discussions about pedagogical practice regarding issues of nationalism and identity, Home-Work constitutes a major investigation and reassessment of the influence of postcolonial theory on Canadian literary pedagogy from some of the top scholars in the field.

The format of this book is arbitrary and exact, the way paint is in a landscape by Alex Colville. It follows the program of the symposium that took place at the University of Ottawa, from April 25 to 27, 1986. As Bakhtin leaps from the sidelines to centre stage, as Derrida clambers out of orchestra pit into the prompter's box, and Lancan swings from the flies, as Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, Saussure, Barthes, and a throng of others rhubarb their way through the text, one recognizes just how connected all the disparate elements of this critical extravaganza really are.

The Canadian Modernists Meet is a collection of new critical essays on major and rediscovered Canadian writers of the early to mid-twentieth century. F.R. Scott's well-known poem 'The Canadian Authors Meet' sets the theme for the volume: a revisiting of English Canada's formative movements in modernist poetry, fiction, and drama. As did Scott's poem, Dean Irvine's collection raises questions - about modernism and antimodernism, nationalism and antinationalism, gender and class, originality and influence - that remain central to contemporary research on early to mid-twentieth-century English Canadian literature. The Canadian Modernists Meetis the first collection of its kind: a gathering of texts by literary critics, textual editors, biographers, literary historians, and art historians whose collective research contributes to the study of modernism in Canada. The collection stages a major reassessment of the origins and development of modernist literature in Canada, its relationship to international modernist literature, its regional variations, its gender and class inflections, and its connections to visual art, architecture, and film. It presents a range of scholarly perspectives, drawing upon the multidisciplinarity that characterizes the international field of modernist studies.

The first multi-disciplinary collection of essays to focus exclusively on early Canadian literature with the aim of reassessing the field and proposing new approaches. ul { list-style-type: none; }Acknowledgements Introduction: Home Ground and Foreign Territory • Janice Fiamengo Reflections on the Situation and Study of Early Canadian Literature in the Long Confederation Period • D. M. R. Bentley Periodicals First: The Beginnings of Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush and Pauline Johnson's Legends of Vancouver • Carole Gerson Rediscovering Re(Dis)covering: Back to the Second-Wave Feminist Future • Cecily Devereux Lady Audley's Secret versus The Abbot: Reconsidering the Form of Canadian Historical Fiction through the Content of Library Catalogues • Andrea Cabajsky "Not Legitimately Gothic": Spiritualism and Early Canadian Literature • Thomas Hodd The Canadian Canon, Being "On the Other Side of the Latch" and Sara Jeannette Duncan's Anglo-Indian Memoir • Christa Zeller Thomas The Duelling Authors: Settler Imperatives and Agnes Laut's Denigration of Pierre Falcon • Albert Braz Anna's Monuments: The Work of Mourning, the Gender of Melancholia and Canadian Women's War Writing • Joel Baetz Hidden Hunger: Early Canadian Women Poets • Wanda Campbell Judging by Appearances: Thomas Chandler Haliburton and the Ontology of Early Canadian Spirits • Cynthia Sugars Hallowed Spaces/Public Places: Women's Literary Voices and The Acadian Recorder 1850–1870 • Ceilidh Hart Who's In and Who's Out: Recovering Minor Authors and the Pesky Question of Critical Evaluation • Jennifer Chambers Texts and Contexts: CEECT's Scholarly Editions • Mary Jane Edwards Contributors Janice Fiamengo is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa, where she teaches Canadian literature and nineteenth-century literature. She is the author of The Woman's Page: Journalism and Rhetoric in Early Canada (2008), published by the University of Toronto Press, and Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination (2007), published by the University of Ottawa Press. Home Ground and Foreign Territory is an original collection of essays on early Canadian literature in English. Aiming to be both provocative and scholarly, it encompasses a variety of (sometimes opposing) perspectives, subjects, and methods, with the aim of reassessing the field, unearthing neglected texts, and proposing new approaches to canonical authors. Renowned experts in early Canadian literary studies, including D.M.R. Bentley, Mary Jane Edwards, and Carole Gerson, join emerging scholars in a collection distinguished by its clarity of argument and breadth of reference. Together, the essays offer bold and informative contributions to the study of this dynamic literature. Home Ground and Foreign Territory reaches out far beyond the scope of early Canadian literature. Its multi-disciplinary approach innovates literal studies and appeals to literature specialists and general readership alike.

More than fifty years after the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye remains one of Canada's most influential intellectuals. This reappraisal reasserts the relevance of his work to the study of literature and illuminates its fruitful intersection with a variety of other fields, including film, cultural studies, linguistics, and feminism. Many of the contributors draw upon the early essays, correspondence, and diaries recently published as part of the Collected Works of Northrop Frye series, in order to explore the development of his extraordinary intellectual range and the implications of his imaginative syntheses. They refute postmodernist arguments that Frye's literary criticism is obsolete and propose his wide-ranging and non-linear ways of thinking as a model for twenty-first century readers searching for innovative ways of understanding literature and its relevance to contiguous disciplines. The volume provides an in-depth examination of Frye's work on a range of literary questions, periods, and genres, as well as a consideration of his contributions to literary theory, philosophy, and theology. The portrait that emerges is that of a writer who still has much to offer those interested in literature and the ways it represents and transforms our world. The book's overall argument is that Frye's case for the centrality of the imagination has never been more important where understanding history, reconciling science and culture, or reconceptualizing social change is concerned.

Alice Munro's Miraculous Art is a collection of sixteen original essays on Nobel laureate Alice Munro's writings. The volume covers the entirety of Munro's career, from the first stories she published in the early 1950s as an undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario to her final books. It offers an enlightening range of approaches and interpretive strategies, and provides many new perspectives, reconsidered positions and analyses that will enhance the reading, teaching, and appreciation of Munro's remarkable-indeed miraculous-work. Following the editors' introduction-which surveys Munro's recurrent themes, explains the design of the book, and summarizes each contribution-Munro biographer Robert Thacker contributes a substantial bio-critical introduction to her career. The book is then divided into three sections, focusing on Munro's characteristic forms, themes, and most notable literary effects.

Shakespeare in Canada is the result of a collective desire to explore the role that Shakespeare has played in Canada over the past two hundred years, but also to comprehend the way our country's culture has influenced our interpretation of his literary career and heritage. What function does Shakespeare serve in Canada today? How has he been reconfigured in different ways for particular Canadian contexts? The authors of this book attempt to answer these questions while imagining what the future might hold for William Shakespeare in Canada. Covering the Stratford Festival, the cult CBC television program Slings and Arrows, major Canadian critics such as Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan, the influential acting teacher Neil Freiman, the rise of Québécois and First Nation approaches to Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's place in secondary schools today, this collection reflects the diversity and energy of Shakespeare's afterlife in Canada. Collectively, the authors suggest that Shakespeare continues to offer Canadians "remembrance of ourselves." This is a refreshingly original and impressive contribution to Shakespeare studies-a considerable achievement in any work on the history of one of the central figures in the western literary canon.

At the Speed of Light There is Only Illumination collects a dozen re-evaluative essays on Marshall McLuhan and his critical and theoretical legacy; from intellectual adventurer creating a complex architecture of ideas to cultural icon standing in line in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. Given McLuhan's prominent status in many academic disciplines, the contributors reflect a multi-disciplinary background. John Moss and Linda Morra chose the essays from a gathering of McLuhan's academic devotees. The contribution — from "McLuhan as Medium" and "McLuhan in Space" to "What McLuhan Got Wrong" and "Trouble in the Global Village" — to provide a kaleidoscope of new views. As Moss writes of the collected essays: "Some are big and some are small, some exegetic and some confessional, some stand as major statements and others are sidelong glances; some resonate with the concerns of public discourse and others are private or privileged or impious and provocative. Each consists of many parts, each a design on its own. They speak to each other...they may have come together as one version of what happened."