Canadian Literature

Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature

Series Editors: Martin Halliwell and Andy Mousley

This series provides accessible yet provocative introductions to a wide range of literatures. The volumes will initiate and deepen the reader's understanding of key literary movements, periods and genres, and consider debates that inform the past, present and future of literary study. Resources such as glossaries of key terms and details of archives and internet sites are also provided, making each volume a comprehensive critical guide.

Canadian Literature

Faye Hammill

An important critical study of Canadian literature, placing internationally successful anglophone Canadian authors in the context of their national literary history.

While the focus of the book is on twentieth-century and contemporary writing, it also charts the historical development of Canadian literature and discusses important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors. The chapters focus on four central topics in Canadian culture: Ethnicity, Race, Colonisation; Wildernesses, Cities, Regions; Desire; and Histories and Stories. Each chapter combines case studies of five key texts with a broad discussion of concepts and approaches, including postcolonial and postmodern reading strategies and theories of space, place and desire. Authors chosen for close analysis include Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen, Thomas King and Carol Shields.

Features

* The first critical guide to Canadian literature in English

* Authors selected on the basis of their popularity on undergraduate courses

* Combines historical and thematic approaches to Canadian writing

* Links close reading of key texts with theoretical approaches to Canadian literature

Faye Hammill is Senior Lecturer in English at Cardiff University.

She is the author of Literary Culture and Female Authorship in Canada

1760-2000 (2003), co-editor of the Encyclopaedia of British Women's

Writing 1900-1

Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Chronology; Introduction; Historical synopsis of Canadian literature in English; Canon-making and literary history in Canada; Indigenous Canadians; About this book; Chapter 1: Ethnicity, Race, Colonisation; Frances Brooke, The History of Emily Montague (1769); E. Pauline Johnson, selected poetry; Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1981); Tomson Highway, The Rez Sisters (1986); Thomas King, Green Grass Running Water (1993); Chapter 2: Wilderness, Cities, Regions; L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908); Ethel Wilson, Swamp Angel (1954); Carol Shields, The Republic of Love (1992); Robertson Davies, The Cunning Man (1994); Alice Munro, 'A Wilderness Station'; Margaret Atwood, 'Wilderness Tips'; Chapter 3: Desire; Martha Ostenso, Wild Geese (1925); John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse (1970); Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966); Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (1996); Dionne Brand, Land to Light On (1997); Chapter 4: Histories and Stories; E. J. Pratt, Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940); Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970); Margaret Laurence, The Diviners (1974); Daphne Marlatt, Ana Historic (1988); Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (1987); Conclusion; Student Resources; Electronic resources and reference sources; Questions for discussion; Alternative primary texts for chapter topics; Guide to Further Reading; Glossary.