1. A short overview of Canadian Literature
Unit 2: Canada
A short overview of Canadian Literature

4. A few quotes on Canadian Literature
“A shape without form.”
“An inescapable question mark.”
“A nagging puzzle.”

5. General Assumptions
Canadian literature has been deeply affected by perceptions of its “ambivalent” status.
Why ambivalent?
A people divided by race and language
A British colony which has thrown off colonialism
An American nation which is apart from the USA

6. C A N D
Britain
France

7. Colonial Era Literary developments were complicated due to:
1) The existence of both French and British cultures.
2) The presence of a flourishing US culture to the south.
Early writings:
Provincial or historical functions
Dependent on European literary tradition
Fundamental task: description of landscape

8. The “survey poem” (R.E. Rashley)
Poems in which the writer portrays a specific locale and uses it to make larger comments on the uniqueness and validity of the New World (as opposed to Europe).

10. Poetry The experiences of immigrants
Building a modern nation out of the wilderness
Through poetry, poets started to look for the Canadian literary “identity”
Regional centres of literacy production:
Nova Scotia
Ontario
Quebec (French – Canadian lit.)

11. Periodicals
The Scribbler
The Canadian Magazine
The Canadian Review

12. Canadian Fiction Early fiction: regional in nature
Concerns / perceptions of provinces
: historical romance
Beginning of the 20th century:
The true emergence of Canadian fiction
Themes: problems of urban life, the “Americanisation” of Canadian life and culture, women’s issues and the concept of a utopian society.

13. Most prominent writers
Margaret Laurence
Margaret Atwood
Yves Beauchemin
Mordecai Richler

14. MARGARET ATWOOD
"You need a certain
amount of nerve
to be a writer."

15. Born on November 18, 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario.
She was the daughter of a forest entomologist [branch of Zoology that deals with insects].
She received her bachelor’s degree from Victoria college [Toronto] in 1961.
Her mentor, Northrop Frye, recommended she pursue a graduate degree at Radcliffe College. While she was there the college joined Harvard University.
Her experiences there helped her feminist views and opposition to the Americanization of Canadian culture.

16. Selected Works The Circle Game (1966) The Edible Woman (1969)
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972)
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
The Year of The Flood (2009)

17. Literary Background
post·mod·ern        adj.   Of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes

18. Literary Devices
Repetition: a symbol is a word or object that stands for another word or object. The object or word can be seen with the eye or not visible.
Free Verse: Verse composed of variable, usually unrhymed lines having no fixed metrical pattern
Symbolism: the practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character.

19. A Sad Child Poem

20. You're sad because you're sad. It's psychic. It's the age
You're sad because you're sad. It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical. Go see a shrink or take a pill, or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll you need to sleep. Well, all children are sad but some get over it. Count your blessings. Better than that, buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet. Take up dancing to forget. Forget what? Your sadness, your shadow, whatever it was that was done to you the day of the lawn party when you came inside flushed with the sun, your mouth sulky with sugar, in your new dress with the ribbon and the ice-cream smear, and said to yourself in the bathroom, I am not the favorite child. My darling, when it comes right down to it and the light fails and the fog rolls in and you're trapped in your overturned body under a blanket or burning car, and the red flame is seeping out of you and igniting the tarmac beside you head or else the floor, or else the pillow, none of us is; or else we all are.