The Trestler House

The Trestler House
Author: Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska
Publisher:
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2009
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

In this postmodern novel about shifting views of history, a young journalist covering the visit of a French prime minister to Quebec becomes fascinated by a newspaper photograph of historic Trestler House. Curious about how such a landmark sheds light on the difference between personal and national identity, he decides to research the history of the grand old building. As he tours the house and gathers documents, its many rooms become symbols of various historical narratives that describe place and time. Asking whether history can truthfully depict every aspect of an event, the novel considers the intrusion of memories and sensations into historical accounts and wonders about the hidden meanings that are not immediately apparent. The result is an intriguing story that shows how multiple approaches--including fictional narrative--often yield the most authentic history.

The Sandwoman

The Sandwoman
Author: Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Total Pages: 104
Release: 1990
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

The author's feminism is subtle. She understands that repression imprisons men as well as women... But although the mirror she holds up is clouded, it does provide a fascinating reflection.

Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future

Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future
Author: Karen McPherson
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 509
Release: 2006-12-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0773577335

In Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future, McPherson explores the memory work, alternative historiographies, and feminist aesthetics by which women writers revisit the past and reimagine the future. Grounded within critical discourses across many discplines, McPherson's analysis engages contemporary discussions about autobiographical genres, post-modern historiographies, memoirs, and literary genealogies.

New World Myth

New World Myth
Author: Marie Vautier
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 365
Release: 1998
Genre: America
ISBN: 0773516697

In this comparative study of six Canadian novels Marie Vautier examines reworkings of myth in the postcolonial context. While myths are frequently used in literature as transhistorical master narratives, she argues that these novels destabilize the traditional function of myth in their self-conscious reexamination of historical events from a postcolonial perspective. Through detailed readings of François Barcelo's La Tribu, George Bowering's Burning Water, Jacques Godbout's Les Têtes à Papineau, Joy Kogawa's Obasan, Jovette Marchessault's Comme une enfant de la terre, and Rudy Wiebe's The Scorched-Wood People, Vautier situates New World myth within the broader contexts of political history and of classical, biblical, and historical myths.

The Encyclopedia of the Novel

The Encyclopedia of the Novel
Author: Peter Melville Logan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 803
Release: 2014-04-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1118723899

Now available in a single volume paperback, this advanced reference resource for the novel and novel theory offers authoritative accounts of the history, terminology, and genre of the novel, in over 140 articles of 500-7,000 words. Entries explore the history and tradition of the novel in different areas of the world; formal elements of the novel (story, plot, character, narrator); technical aspects of the genre (such as realism, narrative structure and style); subgenres, including the bildungsroman and the graphic novel; theoretical problems, such as definitions of the novel; book history; and the novel's relationship to other arts and disciplines. The Encyclopedia is arranged in A-Z format and features entries from an international cast of over 140 scholars, overseen by an advisory board of 37 leading specialists in the field, making this the most authoritative reference resource available on the novel. This essential reference, now available in an easy-to-use, fully indexed single volume paperback, will be a vital addition to the libraries of literature students and scholars everywhere.

Réécriture Des Mythes

Réécriture Des Mythes
Author: Joëlle Cauville
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1997
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9789042001763

Definir de facon univalente la notion de mythe et celle d'utopie semble en soi une entreprise tout a fait utopique. Par ailleurs, jumeler les deux notions, celle du mythe et celle d'utopie, releve d'un processus de reflexion qui peut facilement etre a double tranchant: le mythe, construction par excellende de l'imaginaire humain, ne se situe-t-il pas ailleurs que dans un non-lieu? et l'utopie, quant a elle, ne fait-elle pas echo au mythe, a la fois s'en inspirant, le niant et le transformant? Redondance possible, et aussi, parfois, refus des deux domaines a admettre leur interdependance, cheninement parallele surtout et creation commune de ce qui, en fin de compte, s'avere mythe transforme, utopie revistee. Toutefois, mythes et utopies quels que soient la position choisie, le point de vue defendu, semblent faire bon menage, a en juger par ce projet, mavec dix-neuf textes couvrant principalement la litterature contemporaine des femmes, mais puisant parfois aux uvres anterieures qui ont deja prepare le terrain, en offrant des visions d'existences idylliques ne serait-ce que litteraires."

Marian Engel’s Notebooks

Marian Engel’s Notebooks
Author: Christl Verduyn
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0889205698

Marian Engel emerged as a writer during that period in Canada when nationalism increased and “new feminism” dawned. Although she is recognized as a distinguished woman of letters, she has not been widely studied; consequently we know relatively little about her and her craft. The material collected in Marian Engel’s Notebooks: “Ah, mon cahier, écoute...” is a major step in redressing that neglect. Extracts carefully chosen by Christl Verduyn from Marian Engel’s forty-nine notebooks — notebooks Engel began in the late 1940s and which she maintained until her death in 1985 — track Engel’s creative development, illustrate her commitment to the craft of writing and document her growth as a major Canadian writer. The notebooks also portray Engel’s surprising leaps of logic, her fascination with the bizarre, the eclecticism of her reading and the depth and variety of her thinking. Finally, they present moving documentation of a woman facing cancer and early death. Christl Verduyn’s illuminating introductory discussions to each of the notebooks unobtrusively guide us in the reading of these sometimes difficult writings. Marian Engel’s Notebooks: “Ah, mon cahier, écoute...” leaves readers with a vivid sense of Canadian culture during the 1960s and 1970s. It provides insight into the literary life of one of Canada’s significant woman writers, including her connections with other Canadian writers, and will be of special interest to scholars working in the field of literature.

Literary Impostors

Literary Impostors
Author: Rosmarin Heidenreich
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2018-07-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0773555293

In the first half of the twentieth century, a number of Canadian authors were revealed to have faked the identities that made them famous. What is extraordinary about these writers is that they actually "became," in everyday life, characters they had themselves invented. Many of their works were simultaneously fictional and autobiographical, reflecting the duality of their identities. In Literary Impostors, Rosmarin Heidenreich tells the intriguing stories, both the "true" and the fabricated versions, of six Canadian authors who obliterated their pasts and re-invented themselves: Grey Owl was in fact an Englishman named Archie Belaney; Will James, the cowboy writer from the American West, was the Quebec-born francophone Ernest Dufault; the prairie novelist Frederick Philip Grove turned out to be the German writer and translator Felix Paul Greve. Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, Onoto Watanna, and Sui Sin Far were the chosen identities of three mixed-race writers whose given names were, respectively, Sylvester Long, Winnifred Eaton, and Edith Eaton. Heidenreich argues that their imposture, in some cases not discovered until long after their deaths, was not fraudulent in the usual sense: these writers forged new identities to become who they felt they really were. In an age of proliferating cyber-identities and controversial claims to ancestry, Literary Impostors raises timely questions involving race, migrancy, and gender to illustrate the porousness of the line that is often drawn between an author's biography and the fiction he or she produces.