ReCalling Early Canada: Reading the Political in Literary and Cultural Production (cuRRents) - Softcover

Daniel Coleman; Kate Higginson; Lorraine York

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0888644434 ISBN 13: 9780888644435

Publisher: University of Alberta Press, 2005

Synopsis

ReCalling Early Canada is the first substantial collection of essays to focus on the production of Canadian literary and cultural works prior to WWI. Reflecting an emerging critical interest in the literary past, the authors seek to retrieve the early repertoire available to Canadian readers-fiction and poetry certainly, but family letters, photographs, journalism, and captivity narratives are also investigated. Filling a significant gap in Canadian criticism, the authors demonstrate that to recall the past is not only to shape it, but also to reshape the present. This fresh interest in the cultural past, informed by new approaches to historical inquiry, has resulted in a unique and diverse investigation of more than two centuries of a little known "early Canada."

About this title

From the Back Cover

When we call and recall early Canada what is it that we call upon? How does the very name we give it shape in advance what it is that we set out to recall? ReCalling Early Canada is the first book-length collection of essays to focus on Canadian literary and cultural production prior to WWI. While Canadian literature is often thought to have emerged in the mid twentieth century, the essays in this volume reflect a recent critical interest in earlier generations of cultural production. Taking seriously the project of recall, the essays here not only seek to deliver certain historical documents to the light of present-day critique, they also ask important theoretical and political questions about the various methodologies involved and the assumptions that accompany them. The authors do not limit their analyses to the standards of fiction and poetry-instead they welcome photographs, captivity narratives, family letters, and journalism as part of the repertoire of early Canadian readers. These essays combine a fresh interest in this burgeoning field of study with new approaches to historical inquiry. The result is a unique and diverse investigation of more than two centuries of a relatively unknown early Canada.

About the Author

Jennifer Blair is a doctoral student in the Department of English at McMaster University. Her dissertation explores the connections between literature and architecture in early Canada. Daniel Coleman is Professor of Canadian Literature, Department of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University. He lives in Hamilton. Kate Higginson's doctoral work examines the writing of colonial captivities and indigenous internments in Canada. Her latest article maps Mohawk or Haudenosaunee nationalism and the memorialization of Joseph Brant in the photography of Shelley Niro (Essays on Canadian Writing, Fall 2003). Lorraine York teaches Canadian literature at McMaster University. She has written books on Timothy Findley, Canadian fiction and photography, women’s collaborative writing, and has edited a book of essays on Margaret Atwood. She is currently finishing a book on Canadian literary celebrity.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Alberta Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0888644434
• ISBN 13: 9780888644435
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 440
• Editor: Blair Jennifer, Coleman Daniel, Higginson Kate, York Lorraine