Issue archives

#197 (Summer 2008)
Predators and Gardens

Add to Cart ($19.00)

Articles

Karen Charleson

• Re-considering Margaret Horsfield's Cougar Annie's Garden (p. 12 - 27)
• Subjects: Exploration, Historical Fiction, Landscape/Space

Cinda Gault

• Marian Engel's Bear: Romance or Realism? (p. 29 - 40)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  Critics have long noted their own widely varying responses to Marian Engel's work, and yet Bear drew uncharacteristically uniform praise. This paper positions this anomaly in its social historical context to explain why Bear was so esteemed in its time. I argue that, in this era when second-wave feminism and Canadian nationalism were dominant social movements, critics were impressed with portraits of successful female and national identity discovery. While most of Engel's work seemed pointed in its interference with the concept of unified identity, Bear was amenable to being read as romance in this regard. However, read as realism, this novel can be seen as consistent with Engel's skepticism about unified identity. Toward the end of her life, Engel said Bear was an "empty book," in that one could read anything into it. It remains a fascinating book precisely for this reason.

• Subjects: Exploration, Landscape/Space

Sean Somers

• Anne of Green Gables/Akage no An: The Flowers of Quiet Happiness (p. 42 - 60)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  That a Japanese readership has enjoyed a special connection with Anne of Green Gables continues to be an issue of mirth and curiosity. While critics have investigated the material products of this relationship—tourism, book clubs, and other fan-based festivities—the initial rational as to why the Japanese in particular, of all possible audiences, have taken to Anne remains enigmatic.

  This article proposes one answer to this question of a Japanese readership by studying the allusive textures of Muraoka Hanako's (Mikasa-shôbô, 1952) and Kakegawa Yasuko's (Kôdan-sha, 1999) translations.

  Both translators, in various ways, layered nuances of koten [classical Japanese literature] into Montgomery's text. Thus, interlingual and intercultural strategies underscore many of their linguistic and thematic selections in terms of vocabulary, syntax, and iconography.
  
  By drawing upon the language and poetics of the Japanese classics, Muraoka and Kakegawa fashion a hybridized Anne/An, a character geographically Canadian but also resonating, culturally, with Japanese registers.

• Subjects: Nineteenth Century

Lee Spinks

• Sense and Singularity: Reading Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (p. 62 - 78)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  "Sense and Singularity: Reading Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid" offers a revisionist reading of the style and the politics of both this key long poem and Ondaatje's poetics in general. The article seeks to broaden the critical discussion about Ondaatje's early poetry by claiming that the novelty and force of Billy the Kid inheres in the poet's ability to create a form of minor literature through the event of singularity. The phrase "minor literature" is being employed here in accordance with the sense given to the term by Deleuze and Guattari for whom it no longer describes the representation of a recognized minority or social fraction but instead opens a space within representation for a "people to come. What is remarkable about the poem, the article suggests, is the way it both fashions an historical narrative of the last great phase of the American West and produces singular points of intensity or perception that prevent that narrative from achieving structural coherence. The reading of Billy the Kid that develops attempts to trace the continuing relation between historical sense and singularity by exploring the way Ondaatje's commitment to singular moments, perceptions and events simultaneously composes and discomposes the field of historical representations that his poem presents.

• Subjects: Poetry

Jordana Greenblatt

• Something Sadistic, Something Complicit: Text and Violence in Execution Poems and Thirsty (p. 80 - 95)
• Subjects: Poetry, Trauma

Robert McGill

• No Nation but Adaptation: "The Bear Came over the Mountain," Away from Her, and What It Means to Be Faithful (p. 98 - 111)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  Alice Munro's story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" deals complexly with the question of what constitutes fidelity. Accordingly, perhaps it could not help but anticipate issues confronting Sarah Polley as she filmed her adaptation of the text, Away from Her. The case demonstrates that conceptions of fidelity with regard to artistic adaptation are more than incidentally connected to the kinds of interpersonal fidelity examined by Munro's story. Not least, an adapting artist may choose to take up the symbolic role of the source text's lover or of its filial legatee, even while this opposition obscures ways in which the roles overlap. The prominent use of Canadian settings and intertexts in Away from Her suggests that the same symbolic positions stand as options in relation to an artist's national cultural milieu. In that light, adaptation emerges as a significant trope and practice in Canadian literature.

• Subjects: Body & Health, Film, Home & Family, Short Fiction

Poems

Laurie Kruk

• In the Web (p. 10 - 11)

Gillian Jerome

• Midsummer (p. 28)

Allan Brown

• Three Epigrams (p. 41)

Meredith Quartermain

• New Albion (p. 61)

Meredith Quartermain

• Big News Cafe (p. 79)

Wenting Liao, Wangshu Dai, and Michael Bullock

• Alley in the Rain (p. 96 - 97)

Book Reviews

Search for Embodiment (p. 112 - 113)

by Claire Duncan

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou

Subjects: Sports Writing

At the Water's Edge (p. 113 - 114)

by Elizabeth Galway

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Mud Girl by Alison Acheson
2. Mundy Pond by Roger Maunder

Tatologie (p. 115 - 116)

by Martin Jalbert

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Bonheur Tatol by François Barcelo
2. Bossalo by François Barcelo

Subjects: Francophone

Robin Blaser's Summa (p. 116 - 118)

by Douglas Barbour

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Fire: Collected Essays of Robin Blaser by Miriam Nichols and Robin Blaser
2. The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser by Miriam Nichols and Robin Blaser

Subjects: Poetry

A Bone to Pick (p. 118 - 119)

by Tim Bowling

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Bone Sharps by Tim Bowling

Di Brandt's World (p. 119 - 120)

by Barbara Pell

Book(s) reviewed:

1. So This Is the World & Here I Am in It by Di Brandt

Subjects: Ecocriticism, Feminism

Hiking Historic Trails (p. 120 - 121)

by Nicky Brink

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Forgotten Highways: Wilderness Journeys Down the Historic Trails of the Canadian Rockies by Nicky Brink and Stephen R. Bown

Recueil de nouvelles (p. 121 - 122)

by Jean-Claude Castex

Book(s) reviewed:

1. C'est arrivé un jour! by Jean-Claude Castex

Sexual Sources and Influential Erotics (p. 122 - 124)

by Andrew Lesk

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Loving in Verse: Poetic Influence as Erotic by Stephen Guy-Bray
2. Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets by Billeh Nickerson and John Barton
3. Sexing the Maple: A Canadian Sourcebook by Richard Cavell and Peter Dickinson

Subjects: Gay/Lesbian, Gender

A Good Story about Women's Films (p. 124 - 125)

by Judith Plessis

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Cinematic Howling: Women's Films, Women's Film Theories by Hoi F. Cheu

Subjects: Film, Women's Studies

Epic Laurence (p. 125 - 126)

by Nora Foster Stovel

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Margaret Laurence's Epic Imagination by Paul Comeau

Subjects: Literary Criticism

Canadian Lives (p. 126 - 128)

by Janice Fiamengo

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Dictionary of Canadian Biography: Volume XV, 1921-1930 by Réal Bélanger and Ramsay Cook

Subjects: Biography

Rolling Over the Stone (p. 128 - 129)

by Emily Wall

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Pink Purse Girl by Susan L. Helwig
2. Red Ledger by Mary Dalton
3. The Enchanted House by Beth Janzen

Subjects: Poetry

The Discourse of Disappearance (p. 129 - 130)

by Leslie Dawn

Book(s) reviewed:

1. National Visions, National Blindness: Canadian Art and Identities in the 1920s by Leslie Dawn

L'épopée intime (p. 131)

by Vincent Charles Lambert

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Caïques by Joël Des Rosiers
2. Un autre soleil by Joël Des Rosiers and Patricia Léry

Subjects: Caribbean-Canadian , Francophone, Poetry

Fractured Families (p. 132 - 133)

by Jennifer Bowering Delisle

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Belle Falls by Sherri Vanderveen
2. The Flannigans by M. T. Dohaney
3. The Silent Time by Paul Rowe

Subjects: Home & Family

Family Matters (p. 133 - 135)

by Laurie McNeill

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Requiem for My Brother by Marian Botsford Fraser
2. The Storyteller: A Memoir of Secrets, Magic and Lies by Anna Porter

Subjects: Autobiography, Home & Family

Fascinations américaines (p. 135 - 136)

by Marilou P.-Lajoie

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Bord-de-l'eau by André Pronovost
2. Les Failles de l'Amérique by Bertrand Gervais

Subjects: Culture

Fearful Dis-symmetry (p. 136 - 137)

by Glen Robert Gill

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Northrop Frye and the Phenomenology of Myth by Glen Robert Gill

From Flow Charts to Fantasy (p. 138 - 139)

by Francois Gravel

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Extraordinary Garden by Sheila Fischman and Francois Gravel

Ghosting the NWT (p. 139 - 140)

by Elizabeth Hay

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

Seeing Things (p. 140 - 141)

by James Heneghan

Book(s) reviewed:

1. How it Happened in Peach Hill by Marthe Jocelyn
2. Payback by James Heneghan
3. The Milk Chicken Bomb by Andrew Wedderburn

Slavery's Painful Story (p. 141 - 143)

by Afra Kavanagh

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

Subjects: Afro-Canadian

Making Connections (p. 143 - 144)

by Polly Horvath

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Rex Zeo: King of Nothing by Tim Wynne-Jones
2. The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane by Polly Horvath

What Won't Become of Canada and What Became (p. 144 - 146)

by Gregory Betts

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Intent for a Nation: What Is Canada For? by Michael Byers
2. The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945-71 by José E. Igartua
3. The Polite Revolution: Perfecting the Canadian Dream by John Ibbitson

Subjects: Nationalism

Spies and Romances (p. 147 - 148)

by Marie Jakober

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Halifax Connection by Marie Jakober

Ethel Wilson's Mothers (p. 148 - 149)

by David Stouck

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Mothering Her Self: Mothers and Daughters in Ethel Wilson's Works by Verena Klein
2. Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson and Li-Ping Geng

Subjects: Home & Family

Promise and Prosperity? (p. 149 - 151)

by Sue Sorensen

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Aksel Sandemose and Canada: A Scandinavian Writer's Perception of the Canadian Prairies in the 1920s by Aksel Sandemose and Christopher S. Hale
2. Hard Passage: A Mennonite Family's Long Journey from Russia to Canada by Arthur Kroeger

Subjects: Autobiography, Diaspora, Exploration, Mennonite

Beauté patibulaire (p. 151 - 152)

by Laurent Poliquin

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Douleureuse aurore by Christian Milat
2. Inventaire de succession by Robert Laliberté
3. Les Morts de l'infini by Joel Pourbaix
4. Lueurs de l'aube by Hélène Leclerc
5. Pour ce qui reste de la beauté du monde by Pierre Raphaël Pelletier

Subjects: Francophone

Hot War to Cold War (p. 153 - 154)

by Shaena Lambert

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Radiance by Shaena Lambert

All-Canadian Drama (p. 154 - 155)

by Sabine Schlüter

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Anthology of Québec Women's Plays: Volume I (1966-1986) by Louise H. Forsyth
2. George F. Walker by Harry Lane

Subjects: Drama, Women's Literature

À la recherche du poème (p. 156 - 157)

by Sylvain Marois

Book(s) reviewed:

1. L'Hiver qui court suivi de La Banlieue du coeur des villes by Robert Giroux
2. Ambre et lumière by Mona Latif-Ghattas
3. L'Alcool des jours et des feuilles by Yves Laroche
4. Les Ombres lasses by Jean-Marc Lefebvre

Subjects: Poetry

Canadian Historical Amnesia and the Métis People (p. 157 - 159)

by Michelle La Flamme

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Long Journey of a Forgotten People: Métis Identities and Family Histories by Ute Lischke and David T. McNab

Subjects: Canadian Studies, Native Studies

First Contact (p. 159 - 161)

by Sophie McCall

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Myth and Memory: Stories of Indigenous-European Contact by John Sutton Lutz

Subjects: Native Studies

Theory and Practice (p. 161 - 162)

by Malcolm Page

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Environmental and Site-Specific Theatre: Vol. 8 of Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English by Andrew Houston
2. Space and the Geographies of Theatre: Vol. 9 of Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English by Michael McKinnie

Subjects: Cultural Geography, Drama, Landscape/Space, Twentieth Century

Achieving Greatness (p. 163 - 164)

by George Melnyk

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Great Canadian Film Directors by George Melnyk

Writing Across the Borders (p. 164 - 166)

by Kit Dobson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Soucouyant by David Chariandy
2. The Assassin's Song by M. G. Vassanji
3. The Unfortunate Marriage of Azeb Yitades by Nega Mezlekia

Subjects: Indian/South Asian, Urban Novel

Suspended Animation (p. 166 - 167)

by Janice Morris

Book(s) reviewed:

Subjects: Graphic Novel

Persistent and Challenging Enigmas (p. 167 - 169)

by Jennifer Scott

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Anne of Green Gables by Elizabeth Waterston, L. M. Montgomery, and Mary Rubio
2. Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie and Michael Peterman

Subjects: Children's Literature, Settler Writing

The Wordy and The Wary (p. 169 - 171)

by Katja Lee

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Dropped Glove in Regent Street: An Autobiography by Other Means by
2. Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir by Marina Nemat

Subjects: Autobiography

Alpha Beta Gammas (p. 171 - 172)

by bpNichol

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Alphabet Game: a bpNichol reader by Darren Wershler-Henry and Lori Emerson

Dispersed Geographies (p. 172 - 173)

by Gillian Roberts

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Certainty by Madeleine Thien
2. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje

Subjects: Twenty-First Century

Icare et la poésie (p. 174 - 175)

by Jean-Sébastien Trudel

Book(s) reviewed:

1. L'Inoubliable: chronique III by Fernand Ouellette
2. La Déchirure des mots by Jean Gagnon and Andrea Moorhead
3. La Fatigue et la cendre by Michel Leclerc

Subjects: Poetry

Test, Quest, Conquest (p. 175 - 176)

by Cheryl Cundell

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Hunting for Empire: Narratives of Sport in Rupert's Land, 1840-70 by Greg Gillespie
2. Measuring Mother Earth: How Joe the Kid Became Tyrrell of the North by Heather Robertson
3. Sisters in Two Worlds: A Visual Biography of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill by Hugh Brewster and Michael Peterman

Subjects: Biography, Northern Canada, Regionalism, Settler Writing, Sports Writing

Pour une parole émergente (p. 177)

by Jimmy Thibeault

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Culture et littérature francophones de la Colombie-Britannique: du rêve à la réalité. Espaces culturels francophones Ii. by Guy Poirier

Subjects: British Columbia, Cultural Studies, Francophone, Landscape/Space

British Columbia Theatre at the Edge? (p. 178 - 179)

by Rosalind Kerr

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Theatre in British Columbia by Ginny Ratsoy

Subjects: British Columbia, Drama, Theatre History

écrire le quotidien (p. 179 - 180)

by Carlo Lavoie

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Au café ou ailleurs by Donald Alarie
2. Au jour le jour by Donald Alarie
3. La Cloche de verre by Pierre Gobeil
4. Obsessions by Aurélie Resch

Subjects: Francophone

Drames en série (p. 180 - 181)

by Farah Leplat

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Le vent déporte les enfants austères by Hélène Lépine
2. Les Sept Vies de François Olivier by Martine Richard

Subjects: Francophone

Affectionate Biography of a West Coast Evergreen Shrub (p. 181 - 183)

by Nancy J. Turner

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Salal: Listening for the Northwest Understory by Laurie Ricou

Subjects: Biography, Ecocriticism, Nature Writing

Animate Perceptions (p. 183 - 184)

by Monika Lee

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Actualities by Monica Kidd
2. The Essential George Johnston by Robyn Sarah
3. Time's Covenant by Eric Ormsby

Subjects: Poetry

Theatre & the "Real World" (p. 185 - 186)

by Emily Carr

Book(s) reviewed:

1. City Stages: Theatre and Urban Space in a Global City by Michael McKinnie
2. The Violent Woman as a New Theatrical Character Type: Cases From Canadian Drama by Shelley Scott

Subjects: Drama

Time Out of Joint? (p. 187 - 188)

by Liane Tanguay

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Theorizing Historical Consciousness by Peter Seixas

Subjects: Culture, Historiography

Suzuki on Suzuki (p. 188 - 189)

by Graham Huggan

Book(s) reviewed:

1. David Suzuki: The Autiobiography by David Suzuki

Subjects: Autobiography

Que reste-t-il du Canada français? (p. 189 - 190)

by Pamela V. Sing

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Faire société: société civile et espaces francophones by Joseph Yvon Thériault

Subjects: Francophone, Quebec

The Performance Anxiety of L.M. Montgomery (p. 190 - 192)

by Benjamin Lefebvre

Book(s) reviewed:

1. After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery's Letters to Ephraim Weber, 1916-1941 by Paul G. Tiessen and Hildi Froese Tiessen

Subjects: Correspondence

The Arc of Human Life (p. 192 - 193)

by Leslie-Ann Hales

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Random Illuminations: Conversations with Carol Shields by Eleanor Wachtel

Subjects: Correspondence

Globality in Comics (p. 193 - 194)

by Andrew Yang

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
2. Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China by Guy Delisle

Subjects: Graphic Novel, Nationalism, Travel Writing

the edge of knowing (p. 194 - 195)

by Anne F. Walker

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Decked and Dancing: Poems by Christine Smart
2. Loving the Alien by Laurie Kruk
3. Obon: The Festival of the Dead by Terry Watada

Subjects: Poetry

Dwelling (p. 195 - 196)

by Lisa S. Szabo

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Broken Vessel: Thirty-five Days in the Desert by Harry Thurston
2. The Green Heart of the Tree: Essays and Notes on a Time in Africa by A.S. Woudstra

Subjects: Afro-Canadian

Questioning the Past (p. 197 - 198)

by Gordon Bölling

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Speaking in the Past Tense: Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical Fiction by Herb Wyile

Subjects: Historical Fiction

Naming the Fame Game (p. 198 - 199)

by Owen Percy

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Literary Celebrity in Canada by Lorraine M. York

Subjects: Cultural Studies, Culture