ENGL IMPORT

literature

any cultural product that can be read, analyzed, interpreted, in terms of both its form and its function.

CanLit early years

exploration, colonization, and settlement.

dominant idea in circulation was Canada as a British/French colony, a parent-child relationship between the Old World and the New World

CanLit 1800s-1922

birth of the nation as independent from Britain.

Ideal Canadian was Anglophone, protestant, and male

CanLit 1959-1985

rise of multiculturalism.

emphasis on cultural diversity and religion

CanLit 1985-now

Canada as part of the global community

diasporic and transculturalism

Northrop Frye US

marked by outlaws, sheriffs, vigilantes

kind of "wild west" model of nationhood

free, loose, liberating

about individuality

Northrop Frye Canada

marked by fear of nature (deep terror in regard to nature) and rigid systems of authority to battle the terror of nature

about groups who cling together, afraid of individuality

garrison mentality

about building literal and figurative forts to protect ourselves from nature

Frye describing Canadian literature

the herd-mind

Margaret Atwood metaphors

US: frontier

Britain: cultivated and orderly garden

Canada: survival (barely hanging on)

Frank Davey

CanLit is about re-invention, writers are constantly seeing themselves and their world in different ways

finding news ways/forms/genres/language to write their stories

assumption of new writers

from late 20th century onwards, are most innovative

less straightforward, more daring and experimental, crossing generic boundaries

David Thompson

an old writer (18/19th), but his texts are more modern

unstable and uncertainty

blurred the lines between self and other

binary opposition

two absolutes juxtaposed against each other.

FN-European

Colonized-Colonizer

Wild-Tamed

Other-Self

colonial enterprise

has everything to do with the conflicts and tensions between aboriginal peoples (colonized) and immigrants/settlers from European (British) backgrounds (colonizer)

central paradox of the colonizer/colonized relationship

those who have come from elsewhere (self) have to loathe/be afraid of FN peoples (other) in order to conquer them and displace them from their land

noble savage

romantic concept of man unencumbered by civilization.

that without bounds of civilization, man is essentially good

noble savage problem

if man is essentially good, if savagery is a sign of inherent nobility, how does the colonizer rationalize his oppression of indigenous peoples?

confederation poets

writing about a place that was yet to be fully explored.

stronger sense of what it means to live in this place in terms of their identity

nature is recurring and they are less afraid of it, more control over it

confederation poets and canadianness

don't reference England, a sign of emerging and embracing their Canadianness

1898

Duncan Campbell Scott

Onondaga Madonna

Duncan Campbell Scott

residential schools

depicts Indigenous woman as savage/lesser.

pities her, her mixed race baby

he is scared for his nation

wrote for settlers, to make them afraid of FN peoples

E Pauline Johnson: A cry from an indian wife

straddles two worlds, caught between three nations (England, Canada, FN)

goal of fighting stereotypes of FN peoples

1952

E.J. Pratt

Towards the last Spike

EJ Pratt

epic genre, comes from a privileged background and is highly educated (similar to confederation poets)

building the CPR

John A McDonald in charge

new election brings liberal leader who stalls the building

BC threatens to pull out

back in power at human cost: poorly paid and unsafe conditions

why the epic genre

extremely long railway-long epic project

long poem for long railway

EJ Pratt nationalistic pride

"this is the building of Canada"

we did this

building a mythology of the nation

problem with mythologizing the CPR

people dying, swept political issues under the rug, assumed everyone wanted it, metis/aboriginal peoples being displaced

no mention of FN peoples in Pratt's poem

the feminine

two female figures presented in Pratts peom, both attached to land masses.

woman becomes the passive object nation and man becomes the active subject citizen

the lady of british columbia

wrinkles as a metaphor for the CPR taking so long.

portrayed as a trophy to be captured.

she is being courted by John A McDonald.

portrayed as emotional/neurotic

Canadian Shield

passive, simplified, motionless, seems too old for death and for life.

all she had to do was lie there-violated, abused over and over again

1925

Martha Ostenso

Wild Geese

Wild Geese Marxist approach

caleb: figure of the capitalist, he is greed.

focused on increasing capital at all costs

he only loves the land that is exploitable

enjoys the fact that his kids are uneducated and all they know is work

power not just over his family-but his community

Wild Geese POstcolonial

related to race, looking at how the characters are motivated by colonial discourses

their interactions with indigenous community

white settlers focused on how much land they have-FN focused on working

malcom: half breed, comes in on a horse

1994

Hiromi Goto

Chorus of Mushrooms

postmodernism Hiromi Goto

not so clear, piecing together pieces of informtaiont, with gaps, we never know the full truth

jumping around time frames

intense interest in language (not neutral)

multiple points of view

intertextuality Hiromi Goto

referring to other texts:

the stone angel

obison

multiculturalism Hiromi Goto

attitudes towards their japanese Canadian identity

Naoe: living in the past

Keiko: wants assimilation

Murasaki: neutral, doesnt know

- reveals a dissonance in the vision of multiculturalism in Canada that is supposed to celebrate diversity. At Murasaki's school children of Asian descent were portrayed as "yellow people with skinny eyes".

multiculturalism

late 1960s in response to quiet revolution in Quebec

time of radical change, Quebec wanting to be more industrial, less governed by rural industries, more modern and secular