The Fiddlehead Moment: Pioneering an Alternative Canadian Modernism in New Brunswick - Softcover

Tremblay, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0773559086 ISBN 13: 9780773559080

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019

Synopsis

For many Canadians, the small province of New Brunswick on Canada's scenic east coast is "a nice place to visit but no place to live," plagued for generations by outmigration and economic stagnation. In The Fiddlehead Moment Tony Tremblay challenges this potent stereotype by showcasing the work of a group of literary modernists who set out to change the meaning of New Brunswick in the national lexicon. Alfred Bailey, Desmond Pacey, Fred Cogswell, and a formidable group of local poets and cultural workers - collectively, New Brunswick's Fiddlehead School - sought to restore New Brunswick's literary reputation by adapting avant-garde modernist practices to the contours of the province, opening it to the contemporary world while also encouraging writers to make it their subject. The result was a non-urban form of modernism that was as responsive to technical innovation as to the human geographies of New Brunswick. By placing New Brunswick writers and critics at the forefront of Canadian literature in the midcentury modernist project, Tremblay adds an important new chapter to our understanding of Canadian modernism. The Fiddlehead Moment is the first critical examination of this group's considerable influence. Whether through Bailey's ethnomethodology, Pacey's critical ordering, or Cogswell's editorial eclecticism in the Fiddlehead magazine and Fiddlehead Poetry Books, authors in New Brunswick, Tremblay argues, had a profound impact on writing in Canada.

About this title

About the Author

Tony Tremblay is professor of English at St Thomas University.

Review

"The Fiddlehead Movement offers an incisive analysis and fresh perspective not only on an alternative Canadian Modernism but also gives the reader an important and quite salutary take on the idea of national narrative and how it is constructed." Mary B. McGillivray, St. Francis Xavier University

"An excellent study that addresses a significant gap in our understanding of the history of Canadian literature." Peter Thompson, Carleton University

About this edition

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0773559086
• ISBN 13: 9780773559080
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344