Issue archives

#173 (Summer 2002)
(Crawford, Munro, Watson, Atwood, Duncan)

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Editorial

Glenn Deer

• Writing in the Shadow of the Bomb (p. 6 - 13)
• Subjects: International Conflict, Politics, Postmodernism, Religion, War
• PDF available

Articles

Richard Dellamora

• Isabella Valancy Crawford and an English-Canadian Sodom (p. 16 - 32)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  Although Margaret Atwood chose to open The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories in English (1986) with Isabella Valancy Crawford’s short story, “Extradited” (1886), it has hitherto received little critical comment. In this essay, I contend that Crawford’s story has important things to say about the formation of English-Canadian national ideology in the 1880s — both in the “Orange” version prominent at the time of the North West Rebellion and in the mother-centred ideology of national and imperial purity that characterizes the social purity movement in England in the mid-1880s. Crawford’s critical stance vis-a-vis these formulations draws both upon her double awareness of Canadian actualities as an immigrant of Anglo-Irish background as well as her affiliation with literary Aestheticism as a mode of sexual and cultural dissidence.

• Subjects: Gay/Lesbian, Nineteenth Century, Short Fiction, Women's Studies
• PDF available

Ildikó de Papp Carrington

• Where Are You, Mother? Alice Munro’s Save the Reaper (p. 34 - 51)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  Like “Vandals,” in which a motherless daughter seeks to be rescued by a surrogate mother, “Save the Reaper” is an ironic intertextualization of the archetypal Demeter-Persephone myth. Eve, the mother hoping to reconnect with her alienated daughter, finds not only a surrogate daughter, a prostitute seeking rescue, but also herself. Through this disloacting experience and through mythological, cinematic, historic, and poetic parallels, Munro recontextualizes Eve’s familiar memories to alienate Eve from herself: she is dispossessed of her past and displaced in the present.

• Subjects: Home & Family, Mythology, Short Fiction
• PDF available

Margaret Morriss

• No Short Cuts: The Evolution of The Double Hook (p. 54 - 70)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  Successive typescripts of Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook demonstrate how the author gradually discarded details of historical, geographical and social context and refined its style, structure and narrative voice to embody precisely her imaginative response to the Cariboo Disrtict and its inhabitants. The relative realism of the original version evolved into a text sculpted by poetic technique and rhythm, accenting the mythic qualities of the landscape and its inhabitants. Previously unpublished comments by the author clarify her reasons for these numerous revisions.

• Subjects: Authorship, Novel, Twentieth Century
• PDF available

Jennifer Murray

• Questioning the Triple Goddess: Myth and Meaning in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride (p. 72 - 90)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  In its study of Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, this article points out two ways in which mythical intertexts intervene: as a form of open-ended play worked into the fabric of the text, highlighting associative possibilities; and as a framing structure which delimits and thereby limits in advance the range of possible meanings the text might offer. The investigation of these uses of intertext focuses on the myth of the Triple Goddess. Woven playfully into the construction of the characters in the novel, the Triple Goddess is also the anchoring structure of presence which precludes the possibility of any radical discontinuity in the novel’s discourses of meaning.

• Subjects: Mythology, Novel
• PDF available

Kathryn Ready

• Sara Jeannette Duncan’s A Daughter of Today (p. 95 - 112)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  This article examines Sara Jeannette Duncan’s novel “A Daughter of Today” (1894) as a feminist rewriting of the “fin-de-sicle” magic-picture story. Complicating the plot of the magic-picture story is an intersecting feminist narrative that traces the heroine’s efforts to free herself from the Victorian ideal of the Angel in the House and to realize her professional artistic ambitions, as she embraces the liberating possibilities of Aestheticism and Decadence. The novel simultaneously exposes the limitations of Aestheticism and Decadence for women artists at the “fin de sicle.”

• Subjects: Memory & Identity, Nineteenth Century, Speculative Fiction
• PDF available

Poems

Andrea Dancer

• Ode to Elizabeth Sidal (p. 14 - 15)

Beverley Brahic-Bie

• Crucifixion (p. 33)

Donald Lorimer

• Five Mezzotints (p. 52 - 53)

Christine Wiesenthal

• Vancouver Airport, Domestic Terminal (p. 71)

James Reaney

• The Birth of a "Poem" (p. 91 - 94)

Book Reviews

Reviews section PDF available

Canadian Women's Cinema (p. 113 - 114)

by Peter Urquhart

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women's Cinema by Kay Armatage, Brenda Longfellow, Kass Banning, and Janine Marchessault

Subjects: Film, Gender, Nationalism, Women's Studies

Lest We Forget (p. 114 - 116)

by Coral Ann Howell

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Subjects: Novel, Twentieth Century

Le militant et le libéral (p. 116 - 118)

by Kenneth W. Meadwell

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Olivar Asselin et son temps: le militant by Hélène Pelletier-Baillargeon
2. Taschereau by Bernard Vigod

Subjects: Biography, Francophone, Politics

Faux Fifties (p. 118 - 120)

by John Orange

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Gloria by Keith Maillard
2. Magic Time by W. P. Kinsella
3. Piccolo Mondo by David Bromige, Angela Bowering, George Bowering, and Michael Matthews
4. Restless by Stan Rogal

Subjects: Novel, Short Fiction, Twentieth Century

Reading Rereading (p. 120 - 121)

by Graham Nicol Forst

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Rereading Frye: The Published and Unpublished Works by David Boyd and Imre Salusinszky

Subjects: Literary Theory

Liberalism & the Question of Nation (p. 121 - 124)

by Peter R. Babiak

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Question of Values: New Canadian Perspectives in Ethics and Political Philosophy by Samantha Brennan, Michael Milde, and Tracy McIsaacs
2. Dismantling a Nation: Canada and the New World Order by Stephen McBride and John Shields
3. Impossible Nation: The Longing for Homeland in Canada and Quebec by Ray Conlogue
4. Reinventing Canada/ Reinventer le Canada by Jeffrey Simpson

Subjects: Canadian Studies, Home & Family, Nationalism, Politics, Quebec

Deixis / Dreams (p. 124 - 127)

by Susan Knutson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Suit of Light by Sheila Fischman and Anne Hebert
2. Installations (with and without pronouns) by Erin Mouré, Robert Majzels, and Nicole Brossard
3. She Would Be the First Sentence of My Next Novel / Elle serait la première phrase de mon prochain roman by Nicole Brossard and Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood

Subjects: Francophone, Novel, Poetry, Women's Literature

To Plot or Not (p. 127 - 129)

by Katherine G. Sutherland

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Marrow and Other Stories by Nora Gold
2. Oxygen by Annabel Lyon
3. Play the Monster Blind by Lynn Coady

Subjects: Short Fiction

Half a Life (p. 129 - 131)

by Robert Bringhurst

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858-1906 by Douglas Cole

Subjects: Biography, Native Studies, Oral

Motherhood & Desire (p. 131 - 133)

by Carolyne Van Der Meer

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Desire in Seven Voices by Lorna Crozier
2. Seven Waves: Quebec Women Writers by Mary Gurekas

Subjects: Home & Family, Quebec, Women's Literature

Poetry, Coast to Coast (p. 133 - 136)

by Anne Compton

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Belonging by Sandy Shreve
2. Double Somersaults by Marlene Cookshaw
3. The Bridge That Carries the Road by Lynn Davies

Subjects: Poetry

Re/Locating Physicality (p. 136 - 137)

by Andrea Wasylow Sharman

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Hush by Anne Stone
2. Jane by Judy MacDonald
3. Like Minds by Shannon Friesen
4. Mouthing the Words by Camilla Gibb

Subjects: Memory & Identity, Novel

La courte échelle (p. 137 - 139)

by Daniela Di Cecco

Book(s) reviewed:

1. La livre de la nuit by Marie-Francine Hébert
2. Pas de Chausson dans mon salon by Gilles Gauthier

Subjects: Children's Literature

Fellow Travellers (p. 139 - 141)

by Dean J. Irvine

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Flying Blind by Gary Geddes
2. Leonel/Roque by Jim Smith

Subjects: Poetry, Politics, Travel Writing

Postcolonial Diversity (p. 142 - 143)

by Anna Johnston

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Cross-Cultural Voices: Investigations into the Post-Colonial by Isabella Maria Zoppi and Claudio Gorlier
2. Fusion of Cultures?: ASNEL Papers 2 by Christopher Baume and Peter O. Stummer
3. Writing the Nation: Self and Country in Post-Colonial Imagination by John C. Hawley

Subjects: Afro-Canadian, Caribbean-Canadian , Latin-American, Postcolonialism

Body & Soul (p. 143 - 145)

by Wilhelm Emilsson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Herbarium of Souls by Vladimir Tasic
2. The Sensualist by Barbara Hodgson

Subjects: Novel, Short Fiction, Speculative Fiction

Useful Keys (p. 145 - 149)

by Adrienne Kertzer

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Hamlet for Kids by Lois Burdett
2. The Great Poochini by Gary Clement
3. The Tempest for Kids by Lois Burdett
4. Understanding Children's Literature: Key Essays from the International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature by Peter Hunt
5. Wild Cameron Women by Maureen Hull and Judith Christine Mills
6. Wolf and Seven Little Kids: Based on a Tale from the Brothers Grimm by Anne Blades

Subjects: Children's Literature, Literary Theory

Handling the Past (p. 150 - 151)

by Tamas Dobozy

Book(s) reviewed:

1. On the Case: Explorations in Social History by Franca Iacovetta and Wendy Mitchinson
2. The Suburb of Dissent: Cultural Politics in the United States and Canada During the 1930s by Caren Irr

Subjects: Cultural Studies, Law & Prison, Life Writing, Politics, Twentieth Century, United States

Focusing on Delivery (p. 151 - 153)

by Gili Bethlehem

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Between Women and Nation: Nationalism, Transnational Feminisms, and the State by Norma Alarcón, Minoo Moallem, and Caren Kaplan
2. Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Métissage by Françoise Vergès

Subjects: Colonialism, Feminism, Gender, Nationalism, Native Studies, Transnationalism, Women's Studies

Three Backwards Glances (p. 153 - 155)

by Paul Milton

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Road Dancers by Alden A. Nowlan
2. Selected Poems: 1977-1997 by Patrick Lane
3. To Paris Never Again: New Poems by Al Purdy

Subjects: Journalism, Poetry

Adjacent Worlds (p. 155 - 157)

by Neil ten Kortenaar

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Coterminous Worlds: Magical Realism and Contemporary Post-Colonial Literature in English by Elsa Linguanti, Francesco Casotti, and Carmen Concilio
2. Floating the Borders: New Contexts in Canadian Criticism by Nurjehan Aziz
3. Visions of Canada Approaching the Millennium by Eulalia C. Piñero Gil and Pilar Somacarrera Íñigo

Subjects: Canadian Studies, Literary Criticism, Postcolonialism, Speculative Fiction

Recollections (p. 157 - 158)

by Alexander Forbes

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Hogg: The Poems and Drawings by Barry Callaghan
2. Michael Bullock: Selected Works 1936-1996 by Peter Loeffler and Jack Steward

Subjects: Art, Poetry

La littérature jeunesse (p. 159 - 160)

by Anne Scott

Book(s) reviewed:

1. La malédiction des opales by Chrystine Brouillet
2. Le roi qui venait de bout de monde by Sylvain Trudel
3. Les 100 livres québécois pour la jeunnesse qu'il faut lire by Édith Madore

Subjects: Children's Literature, Francophone, Young Adult

Women's Writing in Québec: Then & Now (p. 161 - 163)

by Valerie Raoul

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Le nom de la mère: mères, filles et écriture dans la litterature québécoise au féminin by Lori Saint-Martin
2. Trois écrivaines de l'entre-deux-guerres: Alice Lemieux, Eva Senécal et Simone Routier by Marie-Claire Brosseau

Subjects: Biography, Home & Family, Quebec, Twentieth Century, Women's Literature

Anxieties of Influence & Allegiance (p. 163 - 165)

by Mark Libin

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Anxious Allegiances: Legitimizing Identity in the Early Canadian Long Poem by C. D. Mazoff
2. Susanna Moody: A Life by Michael Peterman

Subjects: Biography, Poetry

Watching the Detectives (p. 165 - 167)

by Paul Stuewe

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Detective Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Modernism by Susan Elizabeth Sweeney and Patricia Merivale
2. Lost Girls by Andrew Pyper

Subjects: Crime & Detective, Novel, Postmodernism, Speculative Fiction

Postcolonial Collections (p. 167 - 170)

by Paul Sharrad

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Between the Lines: South Asians and Postcoloniality by Deepika Bahri and Mary Vasudeva
2. Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader by Padmini Mongia
3. Post-Colonial Literatures in English: History, Language, Theory by Denis Walder

Subjects: Indian/South Asian, Postcolonialism

English in Québec (p. 170 - 171)

by Roseanna L. Dufault

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Ecrire en anglais au Québec: un devenir minoritaire? by Lianne Moyes
2. The Lament of Charlie Longsong by Sheila Fischman and Roch Carrier

Subjects: Feminism, Francophone, Language/Linguistics, Novel, Quebec

Pitfalls of Postcolonialism (p. 171 - 173)

by Dieter Riemenschneider

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Postcolonialism: My Living by Arun Mukherjee

Subjects: Postcolonialism

With Eyes Wide Open (p. 173 - 175)

by Susan Drodge

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Ophelia After Centuries of Trying by Merike Lugus
2. The Man with the Dancing Monkey by Barbara Mulcahy
3. Women Who Dream Tigers by Vicki Summerfeldt

Subjects: Poetry

CanPop (p. 175 - 177)

by Douglas Ivison

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Crossing the Line: Canadian Mysteries with a Fantastic Twist by Robert J. Sawyer and David Skene-Melvin
2. Northern Frights 5 by Don Hutchison
3. Pop Goes the Story: Canadian Fiction 95/96 by Rob Payne

Subjects: Anthologies, Crime & Detective, Short Fiction, Speculative Fiction

Telling Roy's Story (p. 177 - 179)

by Carol J. Harvey

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Gabrielle Roy: A Life by François Ricard
2. Gabrielle Roy: Creation and Memory by Linda M. Clemente and William A. Clemente

Subjects: Biography

Dramatic Empathy (p. 179 - 181)

by Shannon Hengen

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Karla and Grif: A Play in Two Acts by Vivienne Laxdal
2. Murder in the Atrium: A Tale of Coporate Downsizing, in Three Acts by Margie Taylor
3. Tellin' It Like It Is: A Compendium of African Canadian Monologues for Actors by Djanet Sears

Subjects: Afro-Canadian, Drama, Gay/Lesbian

Old Home/New Home (p. 181 - 183)

by Reinhold Kramer

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Carnival by Harold Rhenisch
2. Homer in Flight by Rabindranath Maharaj
3. My Darling Dead Ones by Erika de Vasconcelos

Subjects: Caribbean-Canadian , Life Writing, Novel, World War II

Black Emigrant in Canada (p. 183 - 186)

by Tracy Bains

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Drifting Year by David Toby Homel and Dany Laferrière
2. A Plea for Emigration Or, Notes of Canada West by Richard Almonte and Mary A. Shadd
3. Black Like Who? Writing Black Canada by Rinaldo Walcott

Subjects: Afro-Canadian, Immigrant, Novel

Perpetual Beginnings (p. 186 - 187)

by Sarah Bok

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Alice, I think by Susan Juby
2. Leaning, Leaning over Water: A Novel in Ten Stories by Frances Itani
3. Strings Attached by Gay Walley
4. The Allegra Series by Barbara Lambert

Subjects: Novel, Young Adult

White's Mythology (p. 187 - 189)

by Charles Barbour

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect by Hayden White

Subjects: Biography, Historiography, History

Who's for Dinner (p. 189 - 191)

by Marilyn Iwama

Book(s) reviewed:

1. My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki
2. The Way We Ate: Pacific Northwest Cooking, 1843-1900 by Jacqueline B. Williams
3. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans by Donna R. Gabaccia

Subjects: Asian Culture, Ethnic History, Food, Nineteenth Century, United States

Times Past Chinese Style (p. 191 - 193)

by Maria Noëlle Ng

Book(s) reviewed:

1. No Dogs and Not Many Chinese by Frances Wood
2. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China 1930-1945 by Leo Ou-fan Lee
3. The Yellow Pear by Gu Xiong

Subjects: Asian Culture, Twentieth Century

Opinions & Notes

Kevin McNeilly

• Walter Benjamin in Vancouver (p. 194 - 198)
• Subjects: Literary Theory, Poetry

Susan Fisher

• War of Words (p. 198 - 204)
• Subjects: United States, War , World War I, World War II