Contemporary Canadian Literature Research Articles

Barometers of Change: Presidents Hugh Eayrs and John Gray of the Macmillan Company of Canada

This essay examines the deliberate role undertaken by the Macmillan Company of Canada to develop a contemporary Canadian literature. It focusses on the period from 1921 to 1973, when first Hugh Eayrs and later John Gray were presidents of the company. Under the direction of Eayrs, Macmillan established itself as a publisher with a culture and interest separate from its parent and affiliate houses in London and New York. Eayrs built a roster of important writers, including Stephen Leacock, Mazo de la Roche, Frederick Philip Grove, E.J. Pratt, Grey Owl and Morley Callaghan, and helped establish an audience for Canadian novels and poetry. After Eayrs’s death, Gray continued to publish Canadian writers, among them novelists Hugh MacLennan, Robertson Davies, W.O. Mitchell and Adele Wiseman. Both Eayrs and Gray were visionaries who shared a deep commitment to fostering the literature of Canada, which they often published in difficult circumstances and at considerable financial risk.

Here is Queer: Nationalisms and Sexualities and the Literatures of Canada by Peter Dickinson

REVIEWS Peter Dickinson. Here is Queer: Nationalisms and Sexualities and the Literatures of Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 262. $19.95 paper. “In the interests of full disclosure,” as the journalists say, I am listed on the acknowledgments page of this book, and I was in fact the external examiner when it was presented as a dissertation at the University of British Columbia. I am sure that there are many among you who will now stop reading, on the grounds that what follows is so tainted as to be useless as a review. All I can offer in justification is that what might be called “Canlit gaycrit” is a small field, and the list of usual suspects is not long. After I agreed to review this book for English Studies in Canada, I was asked to do the same by three other journals. Part of the problem is, of course, the limited view that the hegemony of the majority always has of the minority (“We wanted a black woman on the panel but we asked her and she wouldn’t come.”) But this is also just one more example of the usual Canadian trajectory. First a minority is noticed sociolog­ ically in the United States. Then it is noticed in Canada. Then it is noticed as a factor in American literary studies. Then it is noticed as a factor in Canadian literary studies. Then critics who identify as part of that minority start making noise in the American literary academy (read MLA). Then critics who iden­ tify as part of that minority start making noise in the Canadian literary academy (read ACCUTE). Then it reaches the study of Canadian literature. This might seem an overly cynical view. Still, the conser­ vatism of the study of Canadian literature remains striking, especially when Canadian literature itself is often so adventur­ ous. There are obvious exceptions to this conservatism, often feminist, but they are just that, exceptions. The time when the study of Canadian literature seemed avant garde was a time when Canadian nationalism was itselfavant garde. Today, when Canadian nationalism seems a tired residue maintained by that aging WASPish group, The Council of Canadians, the staidness of the study of Canadian literature just seems a natural fit. Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I am not a kettle casting aspersions at pots. I was part of the rise of nationalism in the 521 ESC 27, 2001 late sixties, I have been teaching and writing about Canadian literature since the early seventies, and I continue to give money to The Council of Canadians. But this does not delude me into thinking that Canlitcrit is part of the cutting edge. This increases the importance ofcritics such as Arun Mukherjee and Rinaldo Walcott, prominent among the growing num­ ber who are putting race in the foreground of the study of Cana­ dian literature. And to this I would add the present volume. The blurbs on the back of the book present the usual hyperbole (“revolutionize Canadian literary studies” is a bit much), but phrases such as “first of its kind” and “fresh and challenging” are certainly appropriate. Dickinson’s book takes various recent studies of nationalism (most notably Homi Bhabha), blends them with similar works on sexuality (most notably Judith Butler), and applies them to contemporary Canadian literature. Dickinson does not “queer Canlit,” in the sense of looking at a variety of texts and show­ ing gay and lesbian aporia, but rather examines the canonically gay and lesbian stars of contemporary literature, such as Timo­ thy Findley, Scott Symons, and Michel Tremblay, and Daphne Marlatt and Nicole Brossard. The title might be a bit misleading to some. It represents a new take on Northrop Frye’s statement of Canadian existential angst: “Where is here?” Dickinson is not making an opposi­ tional statement such as that of Queer Nation but rather is performing explorations. It is not “We’re here. We’re queer,” but “Is there something to this ‘queer’ literature that explains something?” Dickinson is suggesting that these sexual fringes perhaps reveal the meaning of Canada better than culture that appears to be closer to the centre. It is an interesting thesis, one...

Of Obstacles, Survival, and Identity: On Contemporary Canadian Literature(s)

Of Obstacles, Survival, and Identity: On Contemporary Canadian Literature(s)

Metamorphosis: Teaching and Studying Contemporary Canadian Literature on the World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is becoming increasingly important for professors and students of literature. Web resources for literary studies are proliferating and a number of institutions are implementing the delivery of literature courses on the Web. At the University of Northern British Columbia, the English department has adapted, designed and offered four English courses for delivery on the World Wide Web: Canadian Literature, First Nations Literature, Postcolonial Literature and Creative Writing. This article will provide an overview of English 430, a course on contemporary Canadian literature that I offered in January 1997 and again in October 1997 (Fall semester). I will conclude with comments on directions for future web course development (in the area of English literary studies), particularly as this development might affect students located outside a large metropolitan area.

The other woman: women of colour in contemporary Canadian literature

The other woman: women of colour in contemporary Canadian literature

The Caribbean Connexion in Canadian Literature

The Minister of Immigration in the Province of Quebec recently coined the word francophonisables, meaning those newcomers who are more likely to be assimilated into the French-speaking than the English-speaking community; and since the major sources of immigrants to Quebec have shifted from Europe and the United States to the Caribbean islands, South America, and South-east Asia, most new Quebeckers are indeed francophonisables, if not already francophonisis. What this phenomenon means, of course, is that the French language in Quebec is becoming increasingly predominant. Whereas at the time of Confederation approximately twenty per cent of the population of Lower Canada were English-Speaking, the 1981I Census Report indicates only eleven per cent.1 Since the election of the separatist Parti Quibicois in 1976, the actual number of 'persons of English mother tongue' dropped from 8o1,ooo000 to 706,000, and many blame the Government's Bill r oI (The Charter of the French Language), which places severe restrictions on the use of English in business, institutions, industry, advertising, and the professions. There can be no doubt, however, that economic conditions, high unemployment, and the general drift of financial centres westward have also been factors in the English exodus. More significant perhaps, especially with regard to contemporary and prospective Canadian literature in both English and French as well as to the relationship between the two bodies of writing, is the effect that the PQ Government and Bill I oI are having on the expanding francophone population of Quebec. Up to the I97Os, Quebec writers were for the most part dans la famille, concerned with la terre de Quibec and the particular problems and issues of a fairly homogeneous society. Even Louis H~mon, an immigrant from Brittany, soon became immersed in the Quebec consciousness and eventually wrote an almost archetypical novel of the soil, Maria Chapdelaine. Quebec nationalism provided the themes for numerous novels and poems during the Ig60s and early 1970s, notably in the works of Gaston Miron, Roland Gigubre, Hubert Aguin,Jacques Godbout, and ClaudeJasmin. The famous 'October Crisis' of 1970, when terrorists of the FLQ (Quebec Liberation Front) killed Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and held hostage

Resurrections: Susanna Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill and Emily Carr in Contemporary Canadian Literature

Resurrections: Susanna Moodie, Catharine Parr Traill and Emily Carr in Contemporary Canadian Literature