It’s Just a Story: Postmodernism, Politics and Findley’s italics

Abstract

An important part of any stock-taking or appreciation of Timothy Findley’s work to this point is an assessment of Findley’s somewhat ambivalent contribution to the development of the postmodern textual strategies that increasingly have characterized Canadian fiction. This discussion concentrates on a fairly specific aspect of Findley’s work that none the less implicates larger questions of politics and aesthetics - Findley’s use of italics. The essay ultimately argues that though Findley’s use of postmodern strategies may be relatively accessible and recuperable, it does productively effect an important “engagement with the social and historical world” and invites the reader to participate in that engagement. While the essay generally follows the academic form suggested above, it occasionally includes italicized interpolations which respond to, problematise, or interrogate some of the points made in the essay, in a fashion somewhat analagous to Findley’s dialogic use of italics in his texts.