Articles



Dionne Brand’s Winter Epigrams
Abstract: DIONNE BRAND, THIS SISTER, Toronto out of Trinidad, carries her verse with the clear sharp relaxed tension of Sistren and ...

Discomforted Readers and the Cultural Politics of Genre in Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal
Abstract: The Illegal by Lawrence Hill was released September 2015, a particularly discomforting political moment when news of asylum seekers was clearing the front pages and debates about Canada's global responsibilities were determining a federal election. Because of its publication year, overlapping popular genres, and curious reception, The Illegal opens up a valuable conversation about the relationship between Canadian refugee fiction as popular pedagogy and contested imaginaries of the refugee figure within Canada's projections of a humanitarian national identity. The novel is a playful speculative political thriller that satirizes the hostility of the global community and the ambivalence of state humanitarianism. A number of readers and reviewers have expressed discomfort with the pairing of popular genre fiction with a refugee thematic. This article analyses the book's reception in online reviews and shared reading events, against a literary reading of the book through the lens of genre. It notes an interpretive gap and asks what cultural refugee studies can learn from this gap about humanitarian reading publics and Canadian refugee literature.

Discovering the Popular Audience
Abstract: A,LLTHOUGH MUSICAL PLAYWRIGHT John Gray denies that “any deeply-felt political nationalism”1 motivates his creative work, he was doing a pretty ...

Disease, Desire, and Devotion: Mobilities and Becoming-(M)other in Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Better Mother
Abstract: Through the lens of mobilities, this article discusses the physical and mental tensions between mobility and immobility that confront gay men during the embryonic stage of the AIDS epidemic in Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Better Mother. Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophical concept of “becoming-woman,” it further explores the “becoming-(m)other” of Danny, the gay Chinese Canadian protagonist of the novel. Bringing “becoming” into dialogue with the mobilities scholarship as a critical lens through which to address the issue of AIDS in the novel, this article argues that interracial love and queer forms of care have the potential to mitigate the impact of AIDS upon queer mobilities, both physical and metaphysical, and trouble heteronormativity.

Disordering Enactments and (Re)mapping the Reserve in Rhymes for Young Ghouls
Abstract: [T]here are the Indians that have made it their business to make sure that the culture and the languages have ...

Doing the Honourable Thing: Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Last Crossing
Abstract:
English Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing stages an encounter between the ossified social codes of Victorian England and the seemingly anarchic social codes of the Western frontier and explores the way in which notions of masculine identity and conduct have been shaped by imperial attitudes. This article focuses on Vanderhaeghe's engagement with constructions of masculinity by examining his representation of codes of honour concerning sexual behaviour, physical combat and hunting. Doing the truly "honourable thing" in the novel, the article argues, requires resisting social dictates grounded in rigid assumptions about class, race, and gender.

French The Last Crossing de Guy Vanderhaeghe présente une rencontre entre les codes sociaux ossifiés de l’Angleterre victorienne et les codes ostensiblement anarchiques de la frontière de l’Ouest américain. Le roman explore la manière dont l’identité et le comportement masculin ont été formés par les attitudes impériales. Cet article porte sur l’engagement de Vanderhaeghe à propos des constructions de masculinité en examinant sa représentation des codes de l’honneur concernant le comportement sexuel, le combat physique et la chasse. Cet article constate que dans ce roman, pour faire ce qui est « honorable », il faut résister aux règles sociales fondées sur des présomptions rigides au sujet de la classe, de la race et du sexe.

Don Gutteridge’s Mythic Tetralogy
Abstract: THREE PARTS OF DON GUTTERIDGE’S tetralogy appeared in the seventies, so thereIisHnRo analysis of them in John Moss’s Patterns Of ...

Don Quixote and the Puppets
Abstract: ΤHE STRUCTURE of a play must be determined by the drama tist’s effort to achIieHvEe maximum clarity and impact. Every ...

Don’t Fence Me In: Where to put bp Nichol’s “Three Western Tales”
Abstract: h.NICHOL’S Three Western Tales is historiographie meta- fiction, multiple parody, word game and old-fashioned narrative. It simultaneously depends on and ...

Don’t Hanker to Be No Prophet: Guy Vanderhaeghe and the Bible
Abstract: Although not a conventionally religious writer, Guy Vanderhaeghe in his fiction has often contemplated faith, a feature of his work ...