Writing the Montreal Mountain: Below the Thresholds at which Visibility Begins
Writing the Pacific War in the Twenty-First Century: Dennis Bock, Rui Umezawa, and Kerri Sakamoto
Writing the Tripple Whammy: Canadian-Jewish Québécois Identity, the Comedy of Self-Deprecation, and the Triumph of Duddy Kravitz
Mordecai Richler, as a Jewish-Quebecer-Canadian, was a member of a despised minority, living in a province alienated from and marginalized within the dominant national culture, in a country forever looking enviously, anxiously over its shoulder at its more illustrious, more powerful neighbour. As a writer and satirist, however, this triple whammy was a blessing rather than a curse. This article explores some of the ways in which Mordecai Richler’s status as a member of three different stigmatized groups provided material for the self-deprecating humour that characterizes his work. I argue that Richler’s trebly-displaced protagonists, exemplified by Jake Hersh, tend to turn their comedy inward, punishing themselves for their perceived inferiority both to ‘other interlopers’ and to the (non-Canadian) arbiters of culture. In contrast, I suggest that Duddy Kravitz is Richler’s greatest creation because he both embodies and transcends the comic stereotype of the Jew on the make, exploiting but finally rejecting the masochism and internalized anti-Semitism of his relatives and his peers.
Writing, History, and Music in Do Not Say We Have Nothing: A Conversation with Madeleine Thien
Wyndham Lewis at Windsor
Yankee at the Court of Judge Haliburton
Yin Chin
You May Think This, But: An Interview with Maggie de Vries
Yves Thériault : Un vert avant la lettre
Cet article vise à démontrer comment Yves Thériault, en insistant sur l’importance de la nature dans la plupart de ses ouvrages, fut l’un des pionniers littéraires du mouvement vert. Après une brève esquisse des grandes lignes du débat environnemental et quelques remarques sur la présence de la nature dans la littérature québécoise en général, nous procédons à une saisie globale de la sensualité inhérente de la nature chez Thériault pour ensuite étudier en plus de profondeur la façon dont l’indigène interagit avec son monde ambiant. Le rôle de ce dernier est de donner l’exemple à suivre dans toute tentative de résoudre les nombreux problèmes environnementaux auxquels nous faisons face. Le maintien harmonieux de l’équilibre naturel s’érige en métaphore pour le maintien harmonieux de toute relation humaine.