Articles



E. J. Pratt: Apostle of Corporate Man
Abstract: ΤLHE VISION of E. J. Pratt has so far provided the major area of dispute for hisАcНriБtics. To early commentators, ...

E. J. Pratt: Rationalist Technician
Abstract: L HAS BEEN WRITTEN about E. J. Pratt’s handling of language and poetic form. His early reviewers and critics (Brown, ...

E. J. Pratt’s Four-Ton Gulliver
Abstract: DEEP IN TORONTO a rebellious, gifted Newfoundlander sits eternally at the head of a table, a large cooked bird before ...

E. J. Pratt’s Literary Reputation
Abstract: DURiNG THE NINETEEN FORTIES and fifties, E. J. Pratt was given a position of pre eminence in Canadian literary circles ...

E. K. Brown (1905-1951): The Critic and His Writings
Abstract: A CRITIC,” Ε. κ. BROWN WROTE, “is a sensitive reader who can explain his responses and evaluations.”1 In a critical ...

Earle Birney and the Compound Ghost
Abstract: N.POMP OR POET’S POSE: just a tall, self contained self analyst dominating the lectern and mixing shrewd points with occasional ...

Early Richler, Las Fallas, and Sacrificing the National Self
Abstract: As a skeptic whose withering ironies and the “tendency to deflate” were turned both against his own attempts to deny his roots, Canadian and Jewish, and the pretensions of cultural nationalism in general, Richler was an exuberant shape-shifter and trickster—a thorn in the funny-bone of Canadian nationalist aspirations. Faced with the question of his own place within the CanLit canon, he would have expelled cigar smoke in our general academic direction. His defiance of national identification typifies his early process of writerly self-construction as a contrarian satirist who enthusiastically set out to skewer images of the subsidized, artificially protected, and institutionally coddled Canadian artist. Not “compromised by the imprint of a Toronto publisher” in its initial printing, Richler’s earliest novel, The Acrobats, is particularly ferocious in targeting the weaknesses of the naïve Canadian artist, represented by the character of André Bennett. Indeed, the continuing importance of The Acrobats is emphasized in his 1970 essay, “Why I Write”: “I’m still lumbered with the characters and ideas, the social concerns I first attempted in The Acrobats. Every serious writer has, I think, one theme, many variations to play on it.”

Earth-Quaking the Kingdom of the Male Virgin: A Deleuzian Analysis of Aritha van Herk’s “No Fixed Address” and “Places Far From Ellesmere”
Abstract: CRITICAL OPINION concerning Aritha van Herk’s fictions have generally tended to be mixed. One reviewer of her most recent text, ...

Eclectic Detachment
Abstract: IN THE CLOSING PARAGRAPHS of the Introduction to The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse I made an effort to suggest ...

Écriture au Trans-féminine: Trish Salah’s Wanting in Arabic
Abstract: Trish Salah’s Wanting in Arabic practises what I call an écriture au trans-féminine. Salah’s poetry is simultaneously performative and constative, recognizing both the social construction of gender and the impulse to ground notions of womanhood in the material specificity of the female body.  This article traces a continuum between French feminist écriture féminine, québécoise/Canadian écriture au féminin, and Salah’s oeuvre.  Engaging with debates critical to feminist and transgender revisions of psychoanalysis and sexual (in)difference, Salah’s exuberant and irreverent writing deconstructs fundamental master narratives and myths of origin, locating transsexual/transgender realities at the very roots of Western culture.