Paradigms of Canadian Literary Biography

Abstract

This study proposes literary biography as a genre which contributes to the writing of literary history in a unique way. The analysis of Charlotte Gray's Sisters in the Wilderness (1999), which recounts the life of two of the first major figures in Canadian literature, Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, shows how the genre combines personal experience with historical and literary context, thus humanizing history and conferring transcendence to individuality. This is achieved thanks to the literary potential of biography which, out of perspective and tropes, creates harmonic portraits and, ultimately, literary myths. Such creation of myths is crucial for “young” literatures, as is the case of Canadian writing, and Sisters in the Wilderness succeeds in drawing a portrait of these pioneer writers which offers the eye-level view of the beginnings of literary production in English-speaking Canada.