The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature

This book offers a comprehensive and lively introduction to major writers, genres, and topics in Canadian literature. Addressing traditional assumptions and current issues, contributors pay attention to the social, political, and economic developments that have informed literary events. Broad surveys of fiction, drama, and poetry are complemented by chapters on Aboriginal writing, autobiography, literary criticism, writing by women, and the emergence of urban writing in a country historically defined by its regions. Also discussed are genres that have a special place in Canadian literature, such as nature-writing, exploration- and travel-writing, and short fiction. Although the emphasis is on literature in English, a substantial chapter on francophone writing is included.

Eva-Marie Kröller is Professor at the Department of English, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Her books include Canadian Travellers in Europe (1987), George Bowering: Bright Circles of Colour (1992), the only book on Canada’s first poet laureate currently available, and Pacific Encounters: The Production of Self and Other (coedited, 1997).

THE CAMBRIDGE
COMPANION TO

CANADIAN
LITERATURE

EDITED BY

EVA-MARIE KRÖLLER
University of British Columbia, Vancouver

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2004

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Sabon 10/13 pt     System LATEX 2_e   [TB]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

The Cambridge Companion to Canadian literature / edited by Eva-Marie Kröller.
p.  cm. – (Cambridge companions to literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 81441 3 – ISBN 0 521 89131 0 (pbk.)
1. Canadian literature – History and criticism – Handbooks, manuals, etc.   I. Kröller,
Eva-Marie.   II. Series.
PR9184.3.C34  2003
810.9′971–dc21   2003055128

ISBN 0 521 81441 3 hardback
ISBN 0 521 89131 0 paperback

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

CONTENTS

PLATES

MAPS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

E. D. BLODGETT is University Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta. He has published widely on comparative Canadian literature. He received the 1996 Governor-General’s Award and the 1997 Canadian Authors’ Association Award for Apostrophes, a volume of poetry. A renga with Jacques Brault entitled Transfiguration (1998) also received the Governor-General’s Award. Recent publications include Five-Part Invention: A History of Literary History in Canada (2003).

MARTA DVORAK is a professor of Canadian and Commonwealth literatures at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. She is the author of Ernest Buckler: Rediscovery and Reassessment (2001) and has edited numerous books on Canadian writing and culture; three of her articles have received international awards. A book on Nancy Huston is forthcoming. She is currently an associate editor of the International Journal of Canadian Studies.

SUSANNA EGAN and GABRIELE HELMS teach in the Department of English at the University of British Columbia. Egan and Helms have collaborated as editors on the special issue of biography, “Autobiography and Changing Identities” (2001) and on the special issue of Canadian Literature, “Auto/biography” (2002). Egan’s books include Mirror Talk: Genres of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography (1999) and Helms is the author of Challenging Canada: Dialogism and Narrative Techniques in Canadian Novels (2003).

JANICE FIAMENGO, after spending a number of years at the University of Saskatchewan, teaches in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. She has broad interests in Canadian literature and feminist theory, with publications on Margaret Atwood, Sara Jeannette Duncan, Linda Svendsen, and Nellie McClung. Recently published work on L. M. Montgomery examines the politics of the regional landscape. Fiamengo is completing a book on early Canadian women’s strategies of rhetoric and self-presentation.

CORAL ANN HOWELLS is a professor of English and Canadian Literature at the University of Reading. She has been associate editor of the International Journal of Canadian Studies. Her publications include Private and Fictional Worlds: Canadian Women Novelists of the 1970s and 80s (1987), Margaret Atwood (1996, Margaret Atwood Society Best Book Award), Alice Munro (1998), and Contemporary Canadian Women’s Fiction: Refiguring Identities (2003).

CHRISTOPH IRMSCHER teaches in the Department of English at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He is the author of The Poetics of Natural History (1999; 1999 Language and Literature Award of the Association of American Publishers, Scholarly Division; 2000 American Studies Network Prize) and the editor of John James Audobon, Writings and Drawings (1999). His work on early Canadian nature-writing includes an essay on Philip Henry Gosse’s The Canadian Naturalist.

RIC KNOWLES teaches drama at the University of Guelph. He is the editor of Modern Drama, an editor of the Canadian Theatre Review, and author of The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning: Contemporary Canadian Dramaturgy (1999, 2001 Ann Saddlemyer Prize for Outstanding Book on Canadian Drama and Theatre).

EVA-MARIE KRÖLLER teaches in the Department of English and the Programme in Comparative Literature at the University of British Columbia. She was the editor of Canadian Literature from 1995 to 2003. Her publications include Canadian Travellers in Europe, 1851–1900 (1987), George Bowering: Bright Circles of Colour (1992), and the coedited Pacific Encounters: The Production of Self and Other (1997).

MAGDALENE REDEKOP teaches at Victoria College, University of Toronto. She is the author of Mothers and Other Clowns: The Stories of Alice Munro (1992) and is currently completing a book on Mennonite writing in Canada, as well as beginning a book on comedy in Canadian literature.

DAVID STAINES is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. He is the editor of the Journal of Canadian Poetry and of the New Canadian Library. His books include The Forty-Ninth and Other Parallels: Contemporary Canadian Perspectives (1986), Beyond the Provinces: Literary Canada at Century’s End (1995), Northrop Frye on Canada (with Jean O'Grady, 2003) and Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Me (with Stephanie McLuhan, 2003). In 1998, he received the Lorne Pierce Medal for distinguished service to Canadian literature from the Royal Society of Canada.

ROBERT THACKER is Professor of Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University. He is the author of The Great Prairie Fact and Literary Imagination (1989) and was the Director of Canadian Studies at St. Lawrence as well as the editor of the American Review of Canadian Studies. He edited The Rest of the Story: Critical Essays on Alice Munro (1999) and is working on a critical biography of Munro.

PENNY VAN TOORN is a lecturer in Australian Literature and Australian Studies at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Rudy Wiebe and the Historicity of the Word (1995), and coeditor of Speaking Positions: Aboriginality, Gender and Ethnicity in Australian Cultural Studies (1995) and Stories without End (2002). She has published extensively on postcolonial literatures and theory, focusing particularly on writings by and about Indigenous peoples of Australia and Canada.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to the contributors to this volume for their professionalism and collegiality, to Donna Chin, Jennifer Yong, and Russell Aquino for expert technical assistance and research, to Susan Fisher, Alain-Michel Rocheleau, Allan Smith, Kevin McNeilly, and Glenn Deer for editorial and bibliographical advice, to Caroline Howlett for meticulous copy-editing, and to Sarah Stanton at Cambridge University Press for her efficiency and wisdom.

Margaret Atwood, “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer,” reprinted by permission of the author. George Bowering, “For WCW,” reprinted by permission of the author. Robert Kroetsch, “Stone Hammer Poem,” reprinted by permission of the author. Al Purdy, “The Country North of Belleville,” reprinted by permission of Harbour Publishing.

NOTE ON POETRY

Quotations in the text from the following poems are drawn from the sources indicated:

Atwood, Margaret. “A Bus along St Clair: December.” Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1970. pp. 60–1.

—. “Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer.” Atwood, The Animals in That Country. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1968. pp. 36–9.

Birney, Earle. “Bushed” (1951). The Collected Poems. Vol. I. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975. p. 160.

Bowering, George. “For WCW” (1965). Touch: Selected Poems 1960–1970. Toronto/Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1971. pp. 24–7.

Klein, A. M. “Soirée of Velvel Kleinburger” (1928/31). Complete Poems. Part I: Original Poems, 1926–1934. Ed. Zailig Pollock. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990. pp. 183–6.

Kroetsch, Robert. “Seed Catalogue.” Completed Field Notes: The Long Poems of Robert Kroetsch. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989. pp. 32–51.

—. “Stone Hammer Poem.” The Stone Hammer Poems 1960–1975. Lantzville, British Columbia: Oolichan Books, 1975. p. 54.

Page, P. K. “As Ten, as Twenty.” The Hidden Room: Collected Poems. Vol. II. Erin: Porcupine’s Quill, 1997. p. 23.

Pratt, E. J. “The Titanic” (1935). Complete Poems. Part 1. Ed. Sandra Djwa and R. G. Moyles. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. pp. 302–38.

Purdy, Al. “The Country North of Belleville” (1965). Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy. Selected and edited by Al Purdy and Sam Solecki. Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2000. pp. 79–81.

Roberts, Charles G. D. “The Potato Harvest” (1886). The Collected Poems of Sir Charles G. D. Roberts. Ed. Desmond Pacey. Wolfville: Wombat Press, 1985. p. 91.

Scott, F. R. “The Canadian Authors Meet” (1936). The Collected Poems of F. R. Scott. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981. p. 248.

Smith, A. J. M. “To a Young Poet” (1934), “The Lonely Land” (1936). Smith, Poems New and Collected. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967. pp. 21, 50.

CHRONOLOGY

Map 1: Canda