Comparative Literature In Canada

This timely volume takes stock of the discipline of comparative literature and its theory and practice from a Canadian perspective. It engages with the most pressing critical issues at the intersection of comparative literature and other areas of inquiry in the context of scholarship, pedagogy and academic publishing: bilingualism and multilingualism, Indigeneity, multiple canons (literary and other), the relationship between print culture and other media, the development of information studies, concerted efforts in digitization, and the future of the production and dissemination of knowledge. The authors offer an analysis of the current state of Canadian comparative literature, with a dual focus on the issues of multilingualism in Canada’s sociopolitical and cultural context and Canada’s geographical location within the Americas. It also discusses ways in which contemporary technology is influencing the way that Canadian literature is taught, produced, and disseminated, and how this affects its readings.

Merging selected approaches to Comparative North American Studies with detailed textual analyses, this book studies works of writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, and Margaret Atwood. Topics include comparative approaches to the North American modernist short story, narratives of the Canada-US border, and North American reviews of Atwood's novels.

Since its beginning, Comparative Literature has been characterized as a discipline in crisis. But its shifting boundaries are its strength, allowing for collaboration and growth and illuminating a path forward. In Comparative Literature for the New Century a diverse group of scholars argue for a distinct North American approach to literary studies that includes the promotion of different languages. Chapters by senior scholars such as George Elliott Clarke, E.D. Blodgett, and Sneja Gunew are placed in dialogue with those by younger scholars, including Dominique Hétu, Maria Cristina Seccia, and Ndeye Fatou Ba. The writers, many of whom are multilingual, discuss problems with translation, identity and belonging, the modern epic, the role of tradition, minority writing, Francophone and Anglophone novels in Africa, and politics in literature. Engaging with theory, history, media studies, psychology, translation studies, post-colonial studies, and gender studies, chapters exemplify how the knowledge and tools offered by Comparative Literature can be applied in reading, exploring, and understanding not only literary productions but also the world at large. Presenting some of the most current work being carried out by academics and scholars actively engaged in the field in Canada and abroad, Comparative Literature for the New Century promotes the value of Comparative Literature as an interdisciplinary study and assesses future directions it might take. Contributors include George Elliott Clarke (University of Toronto), Dominique Hétu (Alberta & Montreal), Monique Tschofen (Ryerson), Jolene Armstrong (Athabasca), E.D. Blodgett (Alberta), Ndeye Fatou Ba (Ryerson), Maria Cristina Seccia (Hull), Sneja Gunew (UBC), Deborah Saidero (Udine), Elizabeth Dahab (CSULB), Gaetano Rando (Wollongong), Anna Pia De Luca (Udine), Mark A. McCutcheon (Athabasca), Giulia De Gasperi (PEI), and Joseph Pivato (Athabasca).

This work is a comparative study of nineteenth-century English-Canadian and French Canadian novel prefaces, a previously unexplored literary topic. As a study in Comparative Literature - with the application of a specific literary framework and methodology - the study conforms to theoretical and methodological postulates formulated in and prescribed by this framework when applied. This a priori postulate necessitates that the research on and the presentation of the Canadian novel preface be carried out in a specific manner, as follows. First, the study will establish the hypothesis that the preface to nineteenth-century English-Canadian and French-Canadian novels is a genre in its own right. This hypothesis will rest on the following: 1) a taxonomical survey of related terms meaning "preface"; 2) a survey of secondary Iiterature of works dealing with the preface; 3) a discussion of the theoretical framework and methodology of the Empirical Theory of Literature and its appropriateness for the study of the preface; and 4) a discussion of the process of the compilation of the corpus of nineteenth-century Canadian novel prefaces (Chapter one). In a second step, the theoretical postulate outlined in the hypothesis will be put into practice by the development and production of a preface typology (Chapter two). In a third step, further tenets of the Empirical Theory of Literature will be tested on the corpus of the prefaces (Chapter three). In a fourth step, the prefaces will be analysed following the tenets formulated in and prescribed by the systemic framework applied (Chapter four).

A first of its kind, The Palgrave Handbook of Comparative North American Literature provides an overview of Comparative North American Literature, a cutting-edge discipline. Contributors make important interventions into multiculturalism in North America and into U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada border literatures.