Margaret the Magician
Abstract: WHEN THE DART is an icicle aimed right between your eyes it is difficult to separate the magic from the ...
Marian Engel’s “Bear”
Abstract: MLARIAN ENGEL’S Bear has received a good deal of pop- ular attention, part of it from readers who are attracted ...
Marian Engel’s Bear: Romance or Realism?
Abstract: Critics have long noted their own widely varying responses to Marian Engel's work, and yet Beardrew 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 saidBear was an "empty book," in that one could read anything into it. It remains a fascinating book precisely for this reason.
Mariposa Moves On: Leacock’s Darkening “Sequel” to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
Abstract: While Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) remains the most important work of his career and the dominant focus of modern Leacock scholarship, his 1943 "sequel" to the Sketches—a cycle of short tales produced in aid of the Fourth Victory Loan and collectively called "Mariposa Moves On”—sheds unexpected light on the original Sketches while nevertheless having suffered from near-total critical neglect. The new sketches show Mariposa in the shadow of the Second World War, with the townsfolk coming together to raise money for the Loan. Through these eight short tales, Leacock conducts an ambivalent return to the little town in the sunshine that shows, in partial fulfillment of the melancholy warnings offered in the original work’s “Envoi,” that what remains fixed in memory will often be radically changed by experience.
Martha Ostenso, Literary History, and the Scandinavian Diaspora
Abstract: 196 proof 3.indd 6 6/19/08 10:10:20 AM Canadian L 7 iterature 196 / Spring 2008 What we can confidently assert ...
Marty & Zieroth
Abstract: I. Introduction MARTY & ZIEROTH Nature and Family I believe that when Canadian literature is critically assessed at present we ...
Mastering the Mother Tongue
Abstract: In his book Canadian Literary Power, Frank Davey appoints as one of the powerful the poet Daphne Marlatt, “with readers ...
Material Connections in Skawennati’s Digital Worlds
Abstract: This paper will examine the possibilities of Indigenous internet community by placing the work of Mohawk media artist Skawennati Tricia Fragnito in the framework of the cyberpunk genre, which imagines the ways in which human people interact with machine and digital spaces, and how those connections change both individuals and societies. By comparing Imagining Indians in the 25th Century and TimeTravellerTM with Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, which Skawennati references in both texts, I will show how Skawennati Indigenizes understandings of the supposedly “new world” of cyberspace. Overcoming the biases embedded in technology can create maps and pathways through which Indigenous artists and activists can change human social systems, creating new avenues for community engagement.
Matt Cohen’s Monologues in Morality
Abstract: IN HIS FIRST TWO published works, Matt Cohen used the novel form as a vehicle for a searching inquiry into ...
Meditations on the House: The Poetics of Space in Jane Urquhart’s Changing Heaven and The Whirlpool
Abstract: O n Christmas Day, between the early morning opening of gifts and the evening meal, I read Jane Urquhart’s Away, ...