Conrad's later novels

In translation

An homage to Canada's pre-eminent literary translator and a tribute to the connections created through translation.

The frontier and canadian letters

A blend of social sciences, history and literary analyses of contemporaries such as A.G. Bailey and E.K. Brown. this work was a turning point in Canadian literary criticism at the very time of an unprecedented expansion in Canadian studies.

A manner of correspondence

A Manner of Correspondence examines one of the most interesting of literary clubs, the Scriblerus Club, made up of the talented satirists Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell, and Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. Patricia Brückmann explores the Scriblerians as a ...

Mimic fires

In this survey and analysis of long poems written about Canada between 1690 and 1900, D.M.R. Bentley establishes literary contexts for a greatly neglected period of Canadian literature. He also provides critical discussions of the poems, addresses larger questions of tradition and intertextuality...

The old dualities

In this provocative re-examination of the work of Robert Kroetsch, who has been hailed as the father of Canadian post-modernism, Dianne Tiefensee argues that Kroetsch's "deconstruction" fails to address, or even comprehend, the radical nature of Derrida's theory.

The mystery of unity

Unified fields

Forming common ground for literature and science.

The making of the alice books

The Making of the Alice Books includes discussions of the didactic and nursery-rhyme verse traditionally addressed by Carroll's critics while adding and elaborating connections established within and against the continuum of English-language children's literature.

The english housewife

In 1615 Englishman Gervase Markham published a handbook for housewives containing "all the virtuous knowledges and actions both of the mind and body, which ought to be in any complete housewife."

The making of the english literary canon

It is widely accepted among literary scholars that canon-formation began in the eighteenth century when scholarly editions and critical treatments of older works, designed to educate readers about the national literary heritage, appeared for the first time. In The Making of the English Literary C...

Lifelines

Before her death in 1985 at the age of fifty-one, Marian Engel had published seven novels, two collections of short stories, and numerous essays and articles. Despite this impressive output and various literary honours, including a Governor General's Award for her novel Bear, Engel's writing has ...

Robert creeley

Media, memory, and the first world war

Why does the Great War seem part of modern memory when its rituals of mourning and remembrance were traditional, romantic, even classical? In this highly original history of memory, David Williams shows how classic Great War literature, including work by

Interlinguicity, internationality, and shakespeare

Shakespeare between nations, between languages, and between his time and ours.

Unforced flourishing

An introduction to Estonia's internationally best-known writer and intellectual.

In the interval of the wave

Capturing the hidden histories of Prince Edward Island women in their handwritten pages.

Henri bergson and british modernism

Mary Ann Gillies shows that French philosopher Henri Bergson played a central role in the development of British literary modernism. While Bergson's influence on modernism has long been debated, this is the first thorough, current examination of the ways in which his ideas are manifest in British...

The federfuchser/penpusher from lessing to grillparzer

Concentrating on Klesel's role in Franz Grillparzer's Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg, William Reeve argues that Klesel represents the culmination of a literary type - the Federfuchser, or pen-pushing secretary. Evolving out of the political and social conditions of the late eighteenth and early nine...

Imagining culture

Many former members of European empires have demonstrated a need to overcome the colonial process and assert a "postcolonial" culture. Applying postcolonial analysis to Canadian literature, Margaret Turner argues that many nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canadian texts are engaged in the creati...

Gender and narrativity

It is impossible to imagine a community that is not divided into at least two gender groups. It is equally impossible to imagine a community that does not tell or enact stories. The relationship between these universal aspects of human culture is the mainspring of Gender and Narrativity. From Gen...

Northern experience and the myths of canadian culture

In Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture Renée Hulan disputes the notion that the north is a source of distinct collective identity for Canadians. Through a synthesis of critical, historical, and theoretical approaches to northern subjects in literary studies, she challenges the e...

Our own agendas

Our Own Agendas is the second collection of essays by McGill women. The first, A Fair Shake, was published a decade ago. The second volume both reflects the current climate of openness and shows that many barriers remain to be challenged. Our Own Agendas makes a lively and enlightening contributi...

Postmodern canadian fiction and the rhetoric of authority

Criticism that takes an ideological approach to Canadian writing is scarce; political-rhetorical studies are even more uncommon. In this original approach to postwar Canadian fiction Glenn Deer presents provocative readings of ideologies as well as experiments with authorial stances.

Rereading middle english romance

Focusing on features of layout and decoration in manuscripts containing Middle English romances, Murray Evans discusses how these details signal generic and structural relationships among texts. Using a computer-assisted survey to tabulate and quantify features of decoration and presentation in f...

Artists in dylan thomas's prose works

Artists in Dylan Thomas's Prose Works is an exploration of the rich but relatively neglected prose works of Dylan Thomas. Ann Mayer examines Thomas's changing conceptions of language and the creation of meaning as revealed in his numerous self-referential acts of writing and telling.

Stories of the middle space

A faith-based approach to postmodern literature and critical theory.

Recesses of the mind

Recesses of the Mind explores Guðbergur Bergsson's aesthetics of life and literature. Bergsson - like so many writers whose language is not widely spoken or read - is scarcely known outside his homeland, but the psychological depth of his vision reveals the minds of his characters in ways that ar...

Herman melville

Astronomy fascinated Herman Melville and provided an important and recurring theme in all his writing. He was inspired by uranography, stellar lore, ancient philosophical notions about the nature of the universe, and discoveries and speculations in contemporary astronomy. In Herman Melville: Star...

Unreal country

This diverse yet distinctive Canadian modernity is explored in Unreal Country. Referring to a wide range of novels and drawing on scholarship in geography, history, and cultural studies, Glenn Willmott argues that the postcolonial rhetoric of youth coincided with - and influenced - Canadian moder...

Rewriting apocalypse in canadian fiction

Traditional apocalyptic narratives highlight the drama of a chosen elect. Contemporary Canadian fiction, however, typically portrays the apocalypse from the perspective of marginalized individuals barred from Paradise, creating a distinctly anti-apocalyptic discourse. Marlene Goldman traces the h...

Infinity, faith, and time

Infinity, Faith, and Time is an exploration of Renaissance literature and the importance of a powerful tradition of Christian-Platonist rational spirituality derived from St Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa. John Spencer Hill argues that this tradition had

Critical images

How did the tall, lanky Don Quixote and the short, stout Sancho Panza become staple figures of Western iconography, so well known that their silhouettes are easily recognizable in Picasso's famous work? How did the novel Don Quixote, a parody of the romances of knight errantry, become a paean to ...

Thackeray's cultural frame of reference

Thackeray's The Newcomes has been described as one of the richest of Victorian fictions. In Thackeray's Cultural Frame of Reference, R.D. McMaster unveils the magnitude of this richness.

New world myth

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-consc...

Labour, love, and prayer

Labour, Love, and Prayer explores the construction of female stereotypes during a period of mounting religious tension in Ireland by examining the central role played by Protestant and Catholic women in establishing the religious faith of their children a

Undisciplined women

Undisciplined Women, an interdisciplinary collection of twenty essays dealing with women and culture in Canada, explores a neglected area in folklore scholarship. Covering a range of subjects from female sailors to women preachers, contributors examine how women have been involved in identifying,...

The work of words

Susanna Moodie has long been acknowledged as a key figure in pre-Confederation Canadian literature but most of her work has been overlooked or ignored by scholars and readers. The Work of Words not only provides the first comprehensive examination of the whole of Moodie's writing but also revolut...

Growing a race

Growing a Race challenges the traditional reading of the fiction of Nellie McClung (1873-1951), revered author and pioneering feminist, situating it within a discourse of eugenical feminism that sought a racially homogenous "white Dominion."

Swinging the maelstrom

Swinging the Maelstrom is a collection of new critical essays on the work and life of Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957). An international group of literary critics and artists examines a wide range of Lowry's work from the diverse perspectives of biography, correspondence, translation, manuscript editing...

Russia and ukraine

Drawing on colonial discourse and postcolonial theory to reinterpret key writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Myroslav Shkandrij shows how the need to legitimize expansion gave rise to ideas of Russian political and cultural hegemony and influenced Russian attitudes toward Ukraine. ...

Deformed discourse

In Deformed Discourse David Williams explores the concept of the monster in the Middle Ages, examining its philosophical and theological roots and analysing its symbolic function in medieval literature and art.

One must not go altogether with the tide

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is widely remembered not only as one of the most influential voices in twentieth-century literary modernism, but also for his notorious anti-Semitic writings and radio broadcasts that supported Mussolini's Italian Fascist regime. His ideological turn from poetics and aesthe...

Imagined nations

An in-depth look at the effects of change in modes of communication on imagined forms of political community through an examination of a series of Canadian novels and film adaptations.

The picturesque prison

This study of the life and works of Evelyn Waugh traces the novelist's pursuit of his vocation and his long retreat from a world which he came to regard as a spiritual dungeon. Jeffrey Heath explores the paradoxical elements in Waugh's career: his quest for a refuge itself proved to be a prison a...

The poet and the critic

These letters give a unique glimpse into publishing history in Canada and tell a human story of two Canadian men of letters, one in his prime, the other at the end of his life.

Sexual enjoyment in british romanticism

How British Romantic writers reimagined sexual enjoyment and invented psychoanalysis in the process.

The fiddlehead moment

An exciting new reading of Canadian literary modernism that challenges many of the urban-centric biases and opinions still prevalent today.

Ancestral recall

A comparative modernist study of the connections between Irish and Japanese literature, opening up uncharted avenues of cross-cultural exchange.

Refereeing identity

What "national pastime" novels tell us about our country.

From lowbrow to nobrow

From Lobrow to Nobrow demolishes the elite argument that popular fiction and culture are the underside of civilization. In this innovative book, Peter Swirski goes beyond demonstrating that "high-brow" has been transformed to "low-brow," showing that nobrow art is the interactive factor in the re...

Adapted brains and imaginary worlds

Building bridges between brain science and fictional creations may be literary criticism’s most pressing new challenge.

Canlit across media

An innovative collection that evaluates diverse methods of recording, archiving, and remediating literature and literary culture in Canada.

Reading alice munro with jacques lacan

How Lacanian psychoanalysis illuminates the enigmas of human subjectivity at the heart of Alice Munro’s fiction.

Images of goethe through schiller's egmont

Analysing a forgotten, unpublished performance script of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of Goethe's play Egmont, David John examines the collaboration between the two playwrights as a means of addressing fundamental questions on the roles of text and performance. He shows that performance, not t...

Self, nation, text in salman rushdie's "midnight's children"

Many non-Indian readers find the historical and cultural references in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children demanding. In his close reading of the novel, Neil ten Kortenaar offers post-colonial literary strategies for understanding Midnight's Children that also challenge some of the prevailing in...

The pioneer woman

In The Backwoods of Canada and The Canadian Settler's Guide, Catherine Parr Traill described a pioneer woman's role on the Ontario frontier, presenting an idealized portrait of the Canadian woman pioneer in the mid-nineteenth century. By transposing this figure into fiction, Traill managed to cre...

The orwell conundrum

An important contribution to the understanding of George Orwell's thought, particularly to Nineteen Eighty Four. The author challenges the view of the novel as a flawed work of crushing pessimism, arguing convincingly that it is a great humanist's mature vision of his deeply troubled times.

We are what we mourn

The first book on the Canadian poetic elegy challenges all previous ideas about the purpose of mourning.

The migrant text

A wide-ranging analysis of French literature and immigration, inventing a new category for migrant texts.

The wings of the doves

The tragic love of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta - a classic story of passion and death - revisited through the lenses of literature, philosophy, and theology.

Listening for the heartbeat of being

How a multi-talented artist and scholar turned voices of pre-industrial poet-thinkers into texts relevant for today’s world, and tomorrow’s.

Crabbe's arabesque

Sincere ideal

Speaking memory

An innovative account of urban memory as a conversation across languages.

Transformation of sin

Between literature and science

In Between Literature and Science Peter Swirski examines the true intellectual scope of Edgar Allan Poe and Stanislaw Lem. Using a genuinely interdisciplinary approach he shows that they propose far-reaching hypotheses in aesthetics, epistemology, cognitive science, philosophy of science, literar...

Wallace stevens among others

A provocative reassessment of modern American literature and culture through the poetry of Wallace Stevens and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze.

War is here

How a war Canada did not fight profoundly changed the nation’s writing and identity.

The mind in creation

The Mind in Creation celebrates the career of Ross G. Woodman, one of Canada's finest teachers and critics. During his more than forty-one years in the Department of English at the University of Western Ontario he has profoundly influenced scores of graduate and undergraduate students. From his i...

Four contemporary novelists

Four Contemporary Novelists offer accounts of the fiction of Angus Wilson, Brian Moore, John Fowles, and V. S. Naipaul. The author has charted the development of each writer; identified dominant themes, controlling techniques, and informing sensibility; explained what each has tried to accomplish...

The icelandic voice in canadian letters

This fascinating study explores a remarkable ethnic-Canadian literature in close textual and contextual terms for the first time. It lays a groundwork for future comparative research in the field of ethnic Canadian studies, and challenges assumptions about cultural identity and human experience o...

Listening to old woman speak

While Canadian First Nations writers have long argued that non-Native authors should stop appropriating Native voices, many non-Native writers have held that such a request constitutes censorship. "Listening to Old Woman Speak" provides the historical context missing from this debate. Laura Groen...

Maps of difference

As well as providing vivid and sympathetic accounts of geography, peoples, and cultures, three women writers use their books to chart their own historical and social positions. In Maps of Difference Wendy Roy explores the ways in which Anna Jameson, Mina Hubbard, and Margaret Laurence were attune...

Banana bending

Banana Bending is the first book to offer a comparative study of diasporic Asian literatures in Australia and Canada, arguing that while contingent coalitions between diasporic groups serve various politicizing and promotional purposes, artistic and cultural struggles manifest themselves within l...

Tales for an unknown city

Tales for an Unknown City is a vibrant selection of almost fifty stories from among the many told at One Thousand and One Friday Nights of Storytelling, a weekly open gathering in Toronto begun by Dan Yashinsky in 1978 and still going strong. There are tales from Canada and many other parts of th...

History of canadian literature, second edition

The definitive text on Canadian literature.

Existentialist thinkers and ethics

Twentieth-century existential thinkers, critical of traditional, overly rationalistic approaches to ethics, sought to provide a better account of what it means to be human in the world. They articulated ethical views that respected the individual yet were fundamentally concerned with the Other an...

The modern dilemma

Leon Surette's new study of T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens challenges the received view that Stevens' poetry expresses a Humanist world view, and - more surprisingly - documents Eliot's early Humanist phase.

Carlyle and the economics of terror

Thomas Carlyle's difficult and obscure prose - the bane of every reader who has attempted to come to terms with his works - has often been interpreted as a reflection of the author's temperament or idiosyncrasies. Mary Desaulniers, however, argues that Carlyle's language is a deliberate strategy ...

Writing the everyday

In Writing the Everyday Danielle Fuller analyses writing by Atlantic Canadian women from diverse backgrounds. Drawing extensively on original interviews with writers, editors, and publishers, Fuller investigates how and why communities form around texts that record women's everyday realities, his...

John lehman: a tribute

One of the outstanding editors of this century, John Lehmann founded New Writing and London Magazine as well as other literary journals. He also wrote poems, two novels and a distinguished literary autobiography. All aspects of Lehmann's work are discussed in this book of recollections and essays...

The epic of qayaq

The Epic of Qayaq is richly illustrated from the Priscilla Tyler and Maree Brooks Collection of Inuit Art, housed at Carleton University Art Gallery. A scholarly preface by Ann Chandonnet explains the conventions of Native Alaskan storytelling, and there is an introduction by Priscilla Tyler and ...

Sherlock holmes

Craftsman or copyist? Genius or journeyman? Artist or artisan? Of these, what was Conan Doyle? Does anyone take Conan Doyle seriously? Who can explain the phenomenon which makes Sherlock Holmes the instantly recognizable stock figure, probably the only such stereotype and standby in late Victoria...

Speculative fictions

An exploration of the proliferation of historical novels in English-Canadian literature over the last thirty years.

Fresh strange music

A new approach to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's art through the music of her poetry and its social and political implications.

Telling the flesh

An engaging exploration of the stories our bodies tell and the stories we tell about our bodies.

Lyric and polemic

Children into swans

A lucid exploration of fairy tales and the lore of ancient stories embedded in them.

Critical strategies

Latinocanadá

A burgeoning new branch of Hispanic literature, Latino-Canadian writing is now becoming part of the Canadian and Quebec literary traditions. Latinocanadá, a critical anthology, examines the work of Hispanic writers who have settled in Canada over the past thirty years and includes newly translate...

Under conrad's eyes

An innovative account of Joseph Conrad's engagement with nineteenth-century thought.

Silenced sextet

The Canadian publishing industry burgeoned during the late nineteenth century and Canadian poets and novelists began to gain international recognition. Twentieth-century literary scholars, however, have tended to focus on just a few of the writers of this vital expansive period. Many other writer...

Essays for richard ellmann

Richard Ellmann's scholarly work is notable for its striking liveliness and clarity and its genuine illumination of the writers and works with which he dealt. His life of James Joyce, published in 1959, received more commendation and critical praise than any previous literary biography.

Violence and the female imagination

An interdisciplinary study of violent female characters in the works of Quebec women writers.

Not needing all the words

Reading selected texts by Michael Ondaatje, including the novels In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient and the poem "Birch Bark," Annick Hillger demonstrates how his writing both answers and challenges attempts to delineate the idea of a Canadian national self. She sets Ondaatje's work wi...

Aeschylus' use of psychological terminology

In this in-depth analysis of Aeschylus' use of psychological terms, Shirley Darcus Sullivan compares his usage with that of earlier and contemporary poets, including Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Bacchylides, and assesses the degree to which his usage is innovative or traditional.

Timely voices

A reassessment of romance as a resource and strategy of writing that transformed itself across time and texts, and that fascinated writers from medieval to modern times.

Chaucer, spenser, milton