The topical essays, however, are generally exact and rewarding. In 'Conradian Narrative' ... more The topical essays, however, are generally exact and rewarding. In 'Conradian Narrative' Jakob Lothe deals efficiently with framing, the transposing of cause and effect, and the shadings of irony and' defamiliarization.' Andrea White brings an admirable grounding in nineteenthcentury history to bear on the complexities of the imperial enterprise in Conrad's novels, particularly its deflation into the absurd. She concludes that 'while Conrad's fictions inevitably bear traces of pervasive contempo. rary attitudes towards empire, and reveal his own anxiety, they contribute in a crucial way to a revaluation of imperialism.' His contribution to modernism is eloquently described in Kermeth Graham's essay, the most critically vigorous in the collection. He pomts to the 'onmivorousness' of Conrad's irony, the ubiquity of his scepticismJ and in its 'epistemological ambiguity' positions 'Heart of Darkness' at the centre of one major current in modernism. Graham also sketches Conrad's ties with 'the nineteenthcentury realist tradition,' but his primary example, the secret agent VerIoc' s walk to the embassy, is far more emblematic of what none of these essayists recognize in Conrad's fiction, although they might have had they dealt seriously with Jameson's work: the preternatural element of postmodernism. To see Conrad as the first and only 'pre-past-modernist' would be 'too dark too dark altogether ... / (MARK LEVENE)
... Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW Sara Jeannette Duncan Misao DeanDuncan alwa... more ... Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW Sara Jeannette Duncan Misao DeanDuncan always wrote from the per-spective of someone on the margin of power. ... In her novels, however, Duncan's personal point of view is presented as if it were the social norm. ...
The setting of Alissa York’s 2010 novel Fauna, in the Don Valley and its adjacent neighbourhoods ... more The setting of Alissa York’s 2010 novel Fauna, in the Don Valley and its adjacent neighbourhoods of Leslieville and Riverdale, provides a context for the theme of the persistence of life in the midst of waste and destruction. The realist setting of Fauna demonstrates the way the novel values the local and its specific characteristics, and in doing so suggests the way it seeks to reconcile the opposition identified by Susie O’Brien between ecocritical and post-colonial perspectives in contemporary fiction. At once biocentric, multicultural, and urban, the Don Valley setting undermines the discourses of “‘natural’ belonging that are seen to smack dangerously of colonialist forms of essentialism” because its history as a reclaimed habitat (“naturalized” rather than restored) acknowledges that it is a constructed space rather than a natural wilderness. The novel’s shifting narrative perspective includes animal perspectives along with human and reinforces their interconnection, raising the dodgy question of animal subjectivity and entering into dialogue with the genre of the animal story. But rather than projecting human subjectivity onto animals, Fauna makes an ethical choice to recognize the bodily specificity and precarity that humans and animals share. The flourishing of animal and plant life in the “naturalized” Don Valley provides companionship and recognition for the human characters in the novel who frequent the valley in their struggle to overcome trauma, loss, and abuse.
for by Moodie's persistent efforts to please her readers and thereby ensure a much-needed inc... more for by Moodie's persistent efforts to please her readers and thereby ensure a much-needed income. Her letters to Richard Bentley, her English publisher, her avid reading of contemporary periodicals and whatever new literature she could lay her hands on, as well as her inquiries of her editing and writing sisters in England, Eliza and Agnes Strickland, all attest to Susanna's anxiety to keep up with what the public wanted, to produce writing that was market-driven. Surely the inconsistencies of the protagonist of Roughing It in the Bush are a series of attempts to construct a heroine for all tastes, underlined as they usually are by humour and self-deprecation that suggest Moodie was very much in control of her intentions. In his concluding chapter, Thurston suggests that 'in the mid 185os she [essentially] ceased to write for publication' despite the evidence of her correspondence with Richard Bentley during the 186os and his publication of her last novel, The World before Them, in 1867. By the late 186os Moodie realized she could no longer sustain the strategy of agility in response to a fickle public from which she was becoming more and more isolated as she aged.ln October 186g her husband died. The closeness of their relationship is often underestimated. They had been introduced as fellow writers in 1830 in London, and John Moodie clearly supported Susanna's literary endeavours throughout his life. With his death, she lost the daily sustenance of his intellectual companionship and encouragement. She ceased writing for these reasons, rather than, as Thurston contends, a sense of the failure of her writing to reconstruct her own identity. (ELIZABI:.!H HOPKINS)
It’s hard to get more Canadian than the canoe, eh? In these two new titles, Dean and Erickson cri... more It’s hard to get more Canadian than the canoe, eh? In these two new titles, Dean and Erickson critically examine the relationship between the canoe and the Canadian nation. The books’ simultaneous publication supports their authors’ common argument that the canoe has played a significant role in the narration of the nation as a just, multicultural-but-primarily-white, environmentally conscious place. Erased from this version of Canada is the violence of colonialism and its impact on First Nations that challenge dominant ideas about the nation and that might also, but generally do not, appear in stories about the canoe. Dean and Erickson agree that the canoe possesses no inherent relationship to Canada – and indeed that the concept of the nation is itself constantly in flux – and state that their interest in the history of the canoe has nothing to do with the canoe itself, but with what it has been made to mean over time. That said, both authors situate themselves in relation to the canoe and argue that their love of and connection to paddling must also be challenged in order to decolonize (in Dean) and queer (in Erickson) the canoe and the territory it has helped to naturalize as the nation. Dean’s title resonates with the central political question at the heart of both books: how do non-Aboriginal Canadians deal with our colonial inheritance, an inheritance that we have learned to take for granted not only through a convenient narrative embodied in the canoe, but also through the intimate action of paddling? The authors begin to answer this question by denaturalizing through critical analysis the
Sara Jeannette Duncan’s international novels display her consistent concern with defining a uniqu... more Sara Jeannette Duncan’s international novels display her consistent concern with defining a unique Canadian nationality. For Duncan, that nationality is founded on the reconciliation of British tradition and American freedom which results in an ideal of social freedom within traditional bounds. She begins the process of defining Canadians by defining typical Americans and Britons in An American Girl in London, A Voyage of Consolation, A Daughter of Today and Those Deligh1ful Americans; the typical characters in these novels are all crippled, in some way, by personality traits which arise from their nationality. In the later novels, notably Cousin Cinderella, Duncan creates an ideal of Canadian capable of judging Britain and the United States and bringing them into harmony.
It’s hard to get more Canadian than the canoe, eh? In these two new titles, Dean and Erickson cri... more It’s hard to get more Canadian than the canoe, eh? In these two new titles, Dean and Erickson critically examine the relationship between the canoe and the Canadian nation. The books’ simultaneous publication supports their authors’ common argument that the canoe has played a significant role in the narration of the nation as a just, multicultural-but-primarily-white, environmentally conscious place. Erased from this version of Canada is the violence of colonialism and its impact on First Nations that challenge dominant ideas about the nation and that might also, but generally do not, appear in stories about the canoe. Dean and Erickson agree that the canoe possesses no inherent relationship to Canada – and indeed that the concept of the nation is itself constantly in flux – and state that their interest in the history of the canoe has nothing to do with the canoe itself, but with what it has been made to mean over time. That said, both authors situate themselves in relation to the canoe and argue that their love of and connection to paddling must also be challenged in order to decolonize (in Dean) and queer (in Erickson) the canoe and the territory it has helped to naturalize as the nation. Dean’s title resonates with the central political question at the heart of both books: how do non-Aboriginal Canadians deal with our colonial inheritance, an inheritance that we have learned to take for granted not only through a convenient narrative embodied in the canoe, but also through the intimate action of paddling? The authors begin to answer this question by denaturalizing through critical analysis the
The topical essays, however, are generally exact and rewarding. In 'Conradian Narrative' ... more The topical essays, however, are generally exact and rewarding. In 'Conradian Narrative' Jakob Lothe deals efficiently with framing, the transposing of cause and effect, and the shadings of irony and' defamiliarization.' Andrea White brings an admirable grounding in nineteenthcentury history to bear on the complexities of the imperial enterprise in Conrad's novels, particularly its deflation into the absurd. She concludes that 'while Conrad's fictions inevitably bear traces of pervasive contempo. rary attitudes towards empire, and reveal his own anxiety, they contribute in a crucial way to a revaluation of imperialism.' His contribution to modernism is eloquently described in Kermeth Graham's essay, the most critically vigorous in the collection. He pomts to the 'onmivorousness' of Conrad's irony, the ubiquity of his scepticismJ and in its 'epistemological ambiguity' positions 'Heart of Darkness' at the centre of one major current in modernism. Graham also sketches Conrad's ties with 'the nineteenthcentury realist tradition,' but his primary example, the secret agent VerIoc' s walk to the embassy, is far more emblematic of what none of these essayists recognize in Conrad's fiction, although they might have had they dealt seriously with Jameson's work: the preternatural element of postmodernism. To see Conrad as the first and only 'pre-past-modernist' would be 'too dark too dark altogether ... / (MARK LEVENE)
... Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW Sara Jeannette Duncan Misao DeanDuncan alwa... more ... Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW Sara Jeannette Duncan Misao DeanDuncan always wrote from the per-spective of someone on the margin of power. ... In her novels, however, Duncan's personal point of view is presented as if it were the social norm. ...
The setting of Alissa York’s 2010 novel Fauna, in the Don Valley and its adjacent neighbourhoods ... more The setting of Alissa York’s 2010 novel Fauna, in the Don Valley and its adjacent neighbourhoods of Leslieville and Riverdale, provides a context for the theme of the persistence of life in the midst of waste and destruction. The realist setting of Fauna demonstrates the way the novel values the local and its specific characteristics, and in doing so suggests the way it seeks to reconcile the opposition identified by Susie O’Brien between ecocritical and post-colonial perspectives in contemporary fiction. At once biocentric, multicultural, and urban, the Don Valley setting undermines the discourses of “‘natural’ belonging that are seen to smack dangerously of colonialist forms of essentialism” because its history as a reclaimed habitat (“naturalized” rather than restored) acknowledges that it is a constructed space rather than a natural wilderness. The novel’s shifting narrative perspective includes animal perspectives along with human and reinforces their interconnection, raising the dodgy question of animal subjectivity and entering into dialogue with the genre of the animal story. But rather than projecting human subjectivity onto animals, Fauna makes an ethical choice to recognize the bodily specificity and precarity that humans and animals share. The flourishing of animal and plant life in the “naturalized” Don Valley provides companionship and recognition for the human characters in the novel who frequent the valley in their struggle to overcome trauma, loss, and abuse.
for by Moodie's persistent efforts to please her readers and thereby ensure a much-needed inc... more for by Moodie's persistent efforts to please her readers and thereby ensure a much-needed income. Her letters to Richard Bentley, her English publisher, her avid reading of contemporary periodicals and whatever new literature she could lay her hands on, as well as her inquiries of her editing and writing sisters in England, Eliza and Agnes Strickland, all attest to Susanna's anxiety to keep up with what the public wanted, to produce writing that was market-driven. Surely the inconsistencies of the protagonist of Roughing It in the Bush are a series of attempts to construct a heroine for all tastes, underlined as they usually are by humour and self-deprecation that suggest Moodie was very much in control of her intentions. In his concluding chapter, Thurston suggests that 'in the mid 185os she [essentially] ceased to write for publication' despite the evidence of her correspondence with Richard Bentley during the 186os and his publication of her last novel, The World before Them, in 1867. By the late 186os Moodie realized she could no longer sustain the strategy of agility in response to a fickle public from which she was becoming more and more isolated as she aged.ln October 186g her husband died. The closeness of their relationship is often underestimated. They had been introduced as fellow writers in 1830 in London, and John Moodie clearly supported Susanna's literary endeavours throughout his life. With his death, she lost the daily sustenance of his intellectual companionship and encouragement. She ceased writing for these reasons, rather than, as Thurston contends, a sense of the failure of her writing to reconstruct her own identity. (ELIZABI:.!H HOPKINS)
It’s hard to get more Canadian than the canoe, eh? In these two new titles, Dean and Erickson cri... more It’s hard to get more Canadian than the canoe, eh? In these two new titles, Dean and Erickson critically examine the relationship between the canoe and the Canadian nation. The books’ simultaneous publication supports their authors’ common argument that the canoe has played a significant role in the narration of the nation as a just, multicultural-but-primarily-white, environmentally conscious place. Erased from this version of Canada is the violence of colonialism and its impact on First Nations that challenge dominant ideas about the nation and that might also, but generally do not, appear in stories about the canoe. Dean and Erickson agree that the canoe possesses no inherent relationship to Canada – and indeed that the concept of the nation is itself constantly in flux – and state that their interest in the history of the canoe has nothing to do with the canoe itself, but with what it has been made to mean over time. That said, both authors situate themselves in relation to the canoe and argue that their love of and connection to paddling must also be challenged in order to decolonize (in Dean) and queer (in Erickson) the canoe and the territory it has helped to naturalize as the nation. Dean’s title resonates with the central political question at the heart of both books: how do non-Aboriginal Canadians deal with our colonial inheritance, an inheritance that we have learned to take for granted not only through a convenient narrative embodied in the canoe, but also through the intimate action of paddling? The authors begin to answer this question by denaturalizing through critical analysis the
Sara Jeannette Duncan’s international novels display her consistent concern with defining a uniqu... more Sara Jeannette Duncan’s international novels display her consistent concern with defining a unique Canadian nationality. For Duncan, that nationality is founded on the reconciliation of British tradition and American freedom which results in an ideal of social freedom within traditional bounds. She begins the process of defining Canadians by defining typical Americans and Britons in An American Girl in London, A Voyage of Consolation, A Daughter of Today and Those Deligh1ful Americans; the typical characters in these novels are all crippled, in some way, by personality traits which arise from their nationality. In the later novels, notably Cousin Cinderella, Duncan creates an ideal of Canadian capable of judging Britain and the United States and bringing them into harmony.
It’s hard to get more Canadian than the canoe, eh? In these two new titles, Dean and Erickson cri... more It’s hard to get more Canadian than the canoe, eh? In these two new titles, Dean and Erickson critically examine the relationship between the canoe and the Canadian nation. The books’ simultaneous publication supports their authors’ common argument that the canoe has played a significant role in the narration of the nation as a just, multicultural-but-primarily-white, environmentally conscious place. Erased from this version of Canada is the violence of colonialism and its impact on First Nations that challenge dominant ideas about the nation and that might also, but generally do not, appear in stories about the canoe. Dean and Erickson agree that the canoe possesses no inherent relationship to Canada – and indeed that the concept of the nation is itself constantly in flux – and state that their interest in the history of the canoe has nothing to do with the canoe itself, but with what it has been made to mean over time. That said, both authors situate themselves in relation to the canoe and argue that their love of and connection to paddling must also be challenged in order to decolonize (in Dean) and queer (in Erickson) the canoe and the territory it has helped to naturalize as the nation. Dean’s title resonates with the central political question at the heart of both books: how do non-Aboriginal Canadians deal with our colonial inheritance, an inheritance that we have learned to take for granted not only through a convenient narrative embodied in the canoe, but also through the intimate action of paddling? The authors begin to answer this question by denaturalizing through critical analysis the
Roderick Haig-Brown was a “nature writer” whose books described the flora and fauna, both wild an... more Roderick Haig-Brown was a “nature writer” whose books described the flora and fauna, both wild and domesticated, that surrounded him in his family home just outside Campbell River. Books like The Measure of the Year and Fisherman’s Spring were organized by the seasons and by the careful “naming” of each bird and plant as it came into seasonal prominence. “Naming,” a process George Whalley describes as “evocatively, rehearsing with liturgical care and reiteration those things felt, touched, with the sense, remembered,” (617) is a specifically modernist writing strategy that seeks to “call back into felt reality moments of heightened recognition and profound feeling” (617) evoked by objects, and represents Haig-Brown’s modernist attempt to present things concretely, in themselves. But the emotion these books evoke is not merely psychic; they circulate emotion as a social value to reinforce class distinction, express dissent from post-war consumer culture, evoke nostalgia for a lost pastoral ideal, and naturalize the narrative of the nuclear family.
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