CANADIAN LITERATURE

Fiction and short fiction

Dilemma

Constant needs in national literature Imitation of metropolitan norms Shift toward assimilation

Questions of authenticity (inherited, imported artistic forms in new environment)

Products of the British empire

Frances Brooke

The History of Emily Montague (1769)

Seminal work

Relations between the Native populations and the new settlers

John Richardson: The Prophecy: A Tale of the Canadas (1832)

Canadian wilderness Indian uprising (violence, savagery)

Old world transplanted into the new world (mixture of genres)

Canada from colonial period to post- Confederation still

model

themselves on European writers

Imperialist point of view

William Kirby: The Golden Dog (1877)

Gilbert Parker: The Seats of the Mighty (1896)

National consciousness

Sara Jeanette Duncan: The Imperialist

Criticizing the English sociopolitical system House of lords Press Education system

Frederic Philip Grove – Germany, France, Poland, US, Canada

Manitoba: pioneer immigrant arriving in unsettled environment, struggling with land

Settlers of the Marsh (1925)

Realism in literature: the representation of world corresponded to an absolute, universal truth.

Modernism

Belated to CanadaDoes not conform to the classical term

Rather monotonySimple spoken EnglishReflects the interest in psychological activities e.g. Mavis Gallant

Open ended constructions Memory Perception Metaphor and irony Clear and sharp language subjectivity

Postmodernism

Continuation of modernism Value forms of diversity and plurality Writer is a storyteller Double discourse of irony

Could not make their living – move

Canadian content – CBC, National Film Board of Canada (1930)

Contesting Master Narratives

Exploitation of historical novels: George Bowering: Burning Water (1980)

Subvert traditional understanding of history

Reexamining of master narratives of western culture

Reexamining New World myth

Issues as territory

Thomas King: Green Grass, Running Water (1993)

Christian Biblical Heritage and Native mythology

Rudy Wiebe: The Temptations of Big Bear

Native point of view: 19th century conquest of the West• Missionaries• Government agent• Buffalo die out

The English Patient: Michael Ondaatje

The realist tradition in contemporary writing

Margaret Laurence: The Stone Angel (1964)

Subvert the dailyness with unreliable narratorsShifting point of viewsDestabilizing manipulation of time

Yann Martel: Life of Pi (2001)Margaret Atwood: The Edible Woman, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)Tomson Highway: Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998)Leonard Cohen: Beautiful Losers (1966)Josef Skrovecky: Dvorak in Love (1968) allophones

Short fiction

Robert Weaver encouraged to develop the formPublishers were hesitant

Munro’s work is the embodiment of Canadian Short Stories

Close to US

Short story is more likely to find home in foreign publication

Form that exportable and commercialized (1970)

Canadian writing in the 19th Century

Between Great Britain and the United States

Canadian writing need to conform with practices here or therePublication for sureAudience guaranteed

After 1867 no longer colony – writing define the transformation

Stephen Leacock: Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912)

Gentle, ironic humor

Canadian writing in English

• US publications

• Foreign markets

„reflects in part the notorious difficulty of finding enough markets for fiction in Canada”

After 1970

Transformation (Gallant, Munroe)

Gallant – leaving Canada

Selected Stories (1966)

Renaissance – collection after collection

Stories reflect: „ the flesh and blood of the people of this section of the North American Continent

Callaghan: „let America get us: North American, yes, but emphatically not of the united States. Canadian. The Canadian short story.

Meegwetch