A ? A: The Potential for a ’Pataphysical Poetic in Dan Farrell’s The Inkblot Record
Abstract: This paper argues that Dan Farrell’s The Inkblot Record (Coach House, 2000) exemplifies the political possibilities of a pataphysical poetic. To compose The Inkblot Record, Farrell collated and alphabetized one-sentence responses to Rorschach’s famous inkblot test from six source texts. To understand the implications of such a conceptual project, I turn to Alfred Jarry’s 'pataphysics, outlined in his 1911 novel, Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician. In the novel, Jarry appropriates Lucretius’ notion of the clinamen—an unpredictable swerve of an atom—for literature, arguing that the clinamen’s existence means that even our most fundamental beliefs, that A=A, may not be true. Farrell’s clinimatic gesture of placing the language of psychology into the discourse of poetry enacts the paradox outlined by Jarry. The politics of Farrell’s poetic are small but palpable. He does not claim a “revolution of the word” or of the world, but rather performs an irreversible clinimatic swerve within them.
A (Queer) Souvenir of Canada
Abstract:
A (Queer) Souvenir of Canada: Douglas Coupland’s Transformative National Symbols
Abstract: While Douglas Coupland has often been accused of conservative or even reactionary impulses in his art and writing, this article rebalances such claims by theorizing precisely what is at stake in his appropriations of consumer and popular national culture (partiularly in his Souvenir of Canada series). Rather than simply being an easy way of appealing to mass audiences, Coupland borrows received national symbols and performs what Nicky Gregson and Louise Crewe call "rituals of transformation"—activities of actively reimagining and reshaping popular cultural symbols. For him, these transformations signify an opportunity to reduce the alienation produced by coercive and stereotypical national symbols. His mass recirculation of these transformed national symbols suggest a queering of the idea of nation, and reflect a well thought-out effort to destabilize national symbols, leaving them more open to future reinterpretation.
A Calibanic Tempest in Anglophone & Francophone New World Writing
Abstract: IN ITS NEARLY FOUR CENTURIES of existence Shakespeare’s The Tempest has originated an analogous literature in the Old World and ...
A Carnival of Criticism
Abstract: O n e of the most ambitious recent attempts to interre- late the literatures of the Americas is Earl E. ...
A Casualty of Genre: The War Short Stories of Will R. Bird
Abstract: Dubbed “the unofficial bard of the CEF” by Jonathan Vance (“Soldier” 27), Will R. Bird (1891-1984) enlisted in 1916 and ...
A Cat Among the Falcons
Abstract: A CAT AMONG THE FALCONS Ethel Wilson REFLECTIONS ON THE WRITER’S CRAFT L tet FAME, that all hunt after ...
A Colonial Romantic: Major John Richardson, Soldier and Novelist
Abstract: ?HE JOHN RICHARDSON who returned to Canada in February, 1838, was a vastly different being from the ambitious young ensign ...
A Colonial Romantic: Major John Richardson, Soldier and Novelist
Abstract: Desmond Pacey PART I : THE EARLY YEARS MAJOR JOHN RICHARDSON was the first Canadian novelist to achieve an international ...
A Core of Brilliance: Margaret Avison’s Achievement
Abstract: M,LARGARET AVISON’S experimental poetry has come of age; we may now place her in the front rank of Canadian poets. ...