Articles



They Shall Have Arcana
Abstract: SOMEWHERE ALONG THE LINE, the medical profession be- came more attached to gold and methodology than to the human nature ...

This Issue Is Not Ended: Canadian Poetry & the Spanish Civil War
Abstract: The most striking characteristic of Canadian poetry about the Spanish Civil War is that although it has so little to ...

Thomas Haliburton & Travel Books About America
Abstract: ΤLHOMAS HALIBURTON’S OBSERVATIONS on British travel commentaries about America reward examination on several counts. First, they Жно are valuable historically, ...

Thomas King’s National Literary Celebrity and the Cultural Ambassadorship of a Native Canadian Writer
Abstract:

Although Thomas King has never been called a literary celebrity in the popular press or in critical work, his negotiations with the landscape of Canadian cultural production are freighted with questions of public visibility, subjective authenticity, literary canonization, and national consecration. His literary works are readily appropriated by the nation even as he publicly takes on radically resistant notions of national legitimacy and belonging. This essay is located at the intersection of celebrity studies, critical race theory, and CanLit and argues that King’s position as a national literary celebrity gives us an opportunity to explore the nation’s complex and ambiguous appointment of the “cultural ambassador” and the particular success and visibility that King and his work maintain in Canada. It concludes that through his management of his celebrity image, King offers a critique of identity politics as the schema of Canadian cultural production.


Thomas McCulloch
Abstract: IN A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE a p – pended to the New Canadian Library edition of The Stepsure Letters (theonly item ...

Thomsonian Medical Literature and Reformist Discourse in Upper Canada
Abstract: [ROM THE I830s то THE 1850s, the political scene in Upper Canada was dominated by issues of reform. Reinforcing this ...

Three New Poems by Malcolm Lowry
Abstract: ΤIHE LOWRY PAPERS housed in the Special Collections Divi- 1НЕ sion of the University of British Columbia Library contain approximately ...

Through a Glass Darkly: Canadian Art Criticism
Abstract: A.RT is ONE OF THE NECESSITIES of life,” says Henry James; “but even the critics themselves would probably not assert ...

Time and Space in André Langecin’s “L’Elan d’Amérique”
Abstract:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Saviour: Richler’s Picaro Messiahs
Abstract:

The paper focuses on two mature novels by Mordecai Richler, namely St. Urbain’s Horseman and Solomon Gursky Was Here. Taking into account the powerful influence of orthodox religion on the writer’s imagination, the two works are analyzed through the lens of the messianic myth, central to Judaism and underlying, overtly or otherwise, a considerable portion of Jewish writing worldwide. The author of the paper argues that Richler, given to all-encompassing ambivalence (a term already employed by Ramraj in an early critical study), infuses the messianic with a picaresque element; this deconstructive gesture, however, does not rob the myth of its power. The eponymous Horseman and Solomon Gursky are the results of this unusual blend of the messianic and the picaresque, mythicized into larger-than-life figures by Jake Hersh and Moses Berger, respectively, two self-avowed failures badly in need of spiritual and moral guidance. Whereas on the one hand the argument helps situate Richler on the verge of postmodernist discourse, on the other it serves to emphasize the ethical dimension of his writing.