Linda Hutcheon

Abstract

Linda Hutcheon (b. 1947 as Linda Bortolotti) grew up in Toronto, where she did her honors bachelor of arts in modern languages and literatures, and where, after a master of arts in Romance studies at Cornell University, she also defended her doctorate in comparative literature. Hutcheon spent her early academic career as a professor of English at McMaster University before moving back to the University of Toronto in 1988, to the department of English and the Centre for Comparative Literature; she was made University Professor in 1996 and became emeritus in 2010. The impact of her work is felt in a number of distinct but related fields: in literary theory and history, in the study of Canadian literature and culture, in the definition(s) of postmodernism, and most recently, in collaboration with her husband Michael Hutcheon in the scholarly study of opera. Hutcheon’s main contribution to literary criticism may well be her work on the theory and practice of postmodernism, starting with her dissertation on what she then called narcissistic narrative. From a wide and varied theoretical background, she has defined and redefined the contours of postmodernism, doing so on the basis of the close study of postmodernist works in different disciplines: not just literature, but also architecture, music, and the visual arts. What distinguishes Hutcheon’s contribution to literary criticism and art theory is the width of her frame of reference, in terms of both the variety of the works that she has studied and of the critical approaches that she addresses in her own thinking. This width is also reflected in the numerous collaborative initiatives in which she has been involved during her long career: she is one of the few literary critics of her generation to have fully engaged in collaboration with many others, including her husband. With other scholars, she has written articles, published books, and edited special issues of journals and essay collections.