A History of Canadian Literature
A History of Canadian Literature
W.H. New
Copyright Date: 2003
Published by: McGill-Queen's University Press
Pages: 488
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.cttq46p4
Search for reviews of this book
Book Info
A History of Canadian Literature
Book Description:

New offers an unconventionally structured overview of Canadian literature, from Native American mythologies to contemporary texts. Publishers Weekly A History of Canadian Literature looks at the work of writers and the social and cultural contexts that helped shape their preoccupations and direct their choice of literary form. W.H. New explains how - from early records of oral tales to the writing strategies of the early twenty-first century - writer, reader, literature, and society are interrelated. New discusses both Aboriginal and European mythologies, looking at pre-Contact narratives and also at the way Contact experience altered hierarchies of literary value. He then considers representations of the "real," whether in documentary, fantasy, or satire; historical romance and the social construction of Nature and State; and ironic subversions of power, the politics of cultural form, and the relevance of the media to a representation of community standard and individual voice. New suggests some ways in which writers of the later twentieth century codified such issues as history, gender, ethnicity, and literary technique itself. In this second edition, he adds a lengthy chapter that considers how writers at the turn of the twenty-first century have reimagined their society and their roles within it, and an expanded chronology and bibliography. Some of these writers have spoken from and about various social margins (dealing with issues of race, status, ethnicity, and sexuality), some have sought emotional understanding through strategies of history and memory, some have addressed environmental concerns, and some have reconstructed the world by writing across genres and across different media. All genres are represented, with examples chosen primarily, but not exclusively, from anglophone and francophone texts. A chronology, plates, and a series of tables supplement the commentary.

eISBN: 978-0-7735-7136-5
Subjects: Language & Literature
You do not have access to this book on JSTOR. Try logging in through your institution for access.
Log in to your personal account or through your institution.
Table of Contents
Export Selected Citations Export to NoodleTools Export to RefWorks Export to EasyBib Export a RIS file (For EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, Zotero, Mendeley...) Export a Text file (For BibTex)
Select / Unselect all
  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. List of Plates
    List of Plates (pp. ix-ix)
  4. List of Tables
    List of Tables (pp. ix-x)
  5. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. xi-xii)
  6. Preface to the Second Edition
    Preface to the Second Edition (pp. xiii-xiv)
    WHN
  7. Illustrations
    Illustrations (pp. xv-2)
  8. CHAPTER ONE Mythmakers: early literature
    CHAPTER ONE Mythmakers: early literature (pp. 3-24)

    Snow, North, Wilderness: these stereotypes of Canada suggest a fierce uniformity – but even from earliest times, such generalizations have been inaccurate. To read Canadian literature attentively is to realise how diverse Canadian culture is-how marked by politics and religion, how influenced by differences of language and geography, how preoccupied (apparently) by the empirical world, but how fascinated by the mysterious and the uncertain. ‘Apparent’ is important: illusion is everywhere. For repeatedly Canadian history has designed images of continuity and order, which the social realities touch, but only sometimes reconfirm.

    French before it was British, Aboriginal and Inuit before that, when...

  9. CHAPTER TWO Reporters: literature to 1867
    CHAPTER TWO Reporters: literature to 1867 (pp. 25-78)

    Tracing Canadian literature from the beginnings through to 1867 requires the reader to think along two political planes: one observing writers sequentially against a set of events, the other observing written works as formal embodiments of separate attitudes and expectations. The terminus date 1867 illustrates the distinction; it is a year not of great publications but of political Confederation — an event which would not immediately transform literature but which would entirely change the political context within whichcolonialand subsequentlyCanadianwriters wrote. Before 1867 there was no Canadiannation. There were outposts and colonies instead, and the distance of...

  10. CHAPTER THREE Tale-tellers: literature to 1922
    CHAPTER THREE Tale-tellers: literature to 1922 (pp. 79-130)

    It is easiest to characterize the years between 1867 and the First World War as an age of expansion: Victorian, progressive, nationalist, Imperial. The age was also one of definition. The prevalent idea of nationalism declared a fundamental belief in cultural uniformity. In Canada, nationalist sentiment was anglocentric, male-dominated, and justified by appeals to God and National Law. In practice it not only shaped Canada territorially, it also shaped many of the regional and ethnic tensions which continue to challenge the language and structures of Canadian power. Much of Canadian history at this time is bound up with the events...

  11. CHAPTER FOUR Narrators: literature to 1959
    CHAPTER FOUR Narrators: literature to 1959 (pp. 131-202)

    The social forces that came into play in the years following the First World War were significantly to mark the next five decades. Essentially, social contexts became less British, more American. People began to think of their cultural identity in political terms, replacing the racial and religious definition of culture that had so governed the latter years of the nineteenth century. ‘Canada’ became a rallying cry: the nation independently joined the League of Nations, proclaimed its ‘maturity’ (the metaphor of the daughter-nation-growing-up was long-lived), and objected when Governor-General Byng (1862-1935) resisted Mackenzie King’s government wishes, even though Byng was acting...

  12. CHAPTER FIVE Encoders: literature to 1985
    CHAPTER FIVE Encoders: literature to 1985 (pp. 203-282)

    One of Hugh MacLennan’s ironic memoirs inScotchman’s Return(1960) – ’Boy Meets Girl in Winnipeg, and Who Cares?’ – trenchantly reflected on the link between popular image and marketable taste. Canadian settings, especially in the United States, MacLennan observed, simply did not sell. Yet by 1985, Canadian Studies academic programs were active not only in the United States but also throughout Europe, the Commonwealth and East Asia. To trace the source of this interest back to the Massey Report and the tangible support the Canada Council gave to writers makes sense, though it oversimplifies the process. From 1960 to 1985, many...

  13. CHAPTER SIX Reconstructors: literature into the twenty-first century
    CHAPTER SIX Reconstructors: literature into the twenty-first century (pp. 283-358)

    After 1984, conventional versions of Canadian nationhood went through another sequence of adjustments, partly political in origin, partly technological, partly demographic, but all far-reaching in their implications. To begin with, the demographics of the baby-boom generation (those people who in the latter decades of the twentieth century reached the ages of thirty, forty, and fifty, and were planning for retirement at least as early as 2010) affected everything from fashion and income distribution to social policies governing health care, education, and other systems of community support. The so-called echo boom (the children born to boomers in their thirties and forties,...

  14. Chronological table
    Chronological table (pp. 359-424)
  15. Further reading
    Further reading (pp. 425-438)
  16. Index
    Index (pp. 439-464)
McGill-Queen's University Press logo