Representations Of Women And Nature In Canadian Womens Writing

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: Canada has always been associated with its landscape, with a vast and inviolate nature, including prairies, forests with innumerable lakes, idyllic mountain ranges and the Arctic barrens in the far north. With an area of almost 10 million square kilometers, Canada is the second largest country in the world, but with only 31 million people living there and a population density of 3,2 inhabitants per square kilometer, it is also the less populated.1 The theme of nature and wilderness has also been reflected throughout Canadian literary tradition. As Canadian author Aritha van Herk notes, "[t]he impact of landscape on artist and artist on landscape is unavoidable" (1992, 139). Adopting the northern concepts of early explorers and settlers, most literature about the Canadian wilderness has been written by male authors. For a long time, the Canadian North served as background for historical romances and adventure stories. The response to the landscape was often very negative, the wilderness was described as being hostile and dangerous. Parallel to that image, the landscape was portrayed in female terms, as being innocent, inviolate and beautiful – the Canadian North appeared as a femme fatale. Especially in its beginnings, Canadian literature was strongly influenced by its American and British predecessors and the early writers reinforced the myth of the Canadian North. In the early twentieth century, the North was mainly a place of retreat for the fictive heroes of the South who went from the city to the wilderness to find themselves. One of the most famous texts of this time is Frederick Philip Grove's autobiography In Search of Myself (1946). His journey to the North became a synonym for the search of the own self.

Since Silent Spring was published in 1962, the number of texts about the natural world written by women has grown exponentially. The essays in Women Writing Nature: A Feminist View argue that women writing in the 20th century are utilizing the historical connection of women and the natural world in diverse ways. For centuries women have been associated with nature but many feminists have sought to distance themselves from the natural world because of dominant cultural representations which reflect women as controlled by powerful natural forces and confined to domestic spaces. However, in the spirit of Rachel Carson, some writers have begun to invoke nature for feminist purposes or have used nature as an agent of resistance. This collection considers women's writings about the natural world in light of recent and current feminist and ecofeminist theory and finds a variety of approaches and perspectives, both by the scholars and by the authors discussed, culminating with the voices of two women, activist and scientist Joan Maloof and Irish poet Rosemarie Rowley, who both write about the natural world from a feminist perspective.

This volume takes up the challenge of Canadian women's writing in its diversity, in order to examine the terms on which subjectivity, in its social, political and literary dimensions, emerges as discourse. Work from writers as diverse as Dionne Brand, Hiromi Goto and Margaret Atwood, among others, are studied both in their specific dimensions and through the collective focus of cultural and textual revision which characterizes Canadian writing in the feminine. Current theorizing on the postcolonial imaginary is brought to bear in the interests of forging or unpacking those links which tie the Self to culture. As such, Redefining the Subject sets out to discover the limits of the aesthetic in its encounter with the political: the figures and designs which envisage textual reimaginings as statements of a contemporary Canadian reality.

"Marlene Goldman posits intriguing connections between the act of map-making, postmodern theory, and female identity in this study of the experimental works of five Canadian women writers: Intertidal Life by Audrey Thomas, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World by Susan Swan, Ana Historic by Daphne Marlatt, The Whirlpool by Jane Urquhart and the fictions of Aritha van Herk."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

La presente tesis se centra en el género novelístico en lengua inglesa como paradigma de la Identidad literaria canadiense con el fin de analizar su construcción restrictiva por medio de la Recuperación de contribuciones de mujeres y autores étnicos que han sido bien relegadas o bien infravaloradas como agentes literarios relevantes. Esta investigación abarca un periodo que comprende desde la publicación de la primera novela canadiense en inglés, The History of Emily Montague de Frances Brooke en 1769, hasta 1904 año en el que la obra de Sara Jeannette Duncan titulada The Imperialist vió la luz; es decir, desde los comienzos del género en inglés hasta la primera novela modernista. La primera parte engloba el marco teórico general del Nuevo Historicismo, el Feminismo y los Estudios Étnicos puesto que resaltan el papel crucial de la historización de la literatura en la creación de tradiciones e identidades literarias, e impulsan una visión crítica tanto de la producción literaria de mujeres y escritores étnicos como de su consideración. La segunda parte se centra en la historia, tradición e identidad literarias canadienses. Por medio de la novela, se analiza el proceso de antologización de la literatura canadiense en inglés a través de un estudio detallado sobre la presencia/ausencia de autoras y autores étnicos en antologías publicadas entre 1920 y 2004. También se incluyen las contribuciones de críticos/as feministas y/o étnicos puesto que cuestionan axiomas establecidos en la historia, tradición e identidad canadienses y posibilitan el acceso a las obras de estos escritores/as alternativos cuyos diversos sentidos identitarios, de otro modo silenciados, son revelados. Precisamente estos diferentes sentidos de la identidad son el eje de la tercera parte. Desde 1769 a 1904 existen: una primera novela frecuentemente infravalorada escrita Frances Brooke; novelas olvidadas de autoras con gran reconocimiento como Susanna (Strickland) Moodie; escritoras relevantes en la ficción juvenil como es el caso de Agnes Maule Machar, Margaret Murray Robertson y Margaret Marshall Saunders; contribuciones tempranas de autores étnicos como Martin Robinson Delany y Winnifred Eaton; así como novelistas de éxito de la talla Agnes Early Fleming, Lily Dougall, Susan Frances Harrison y Sara Jeannette Duncan. Dándoles voz y resaltando su relevancia, este trabajo demuestra que la literatura canadiense temprana está plagada de autoras y autores étnicos inteligentes, poderosos y reconocidos cuyas aportaciones deben ser re-consideradas si se pretende seguir manteniendo el carácter multicultural y no patriarcal de las letras canadienses. Estas novelas de un autor afroamericano y residente temporal en Canadá, de una mujer canadiense de ascendencia chino-inglesa, y un amplio espectro de mujeres inmigrantes o nativas pone de manifiesto no sólo que Canadá cuenta con un pasado literario sólido y forjado desde la diversidad sino que cuestiona el hecho de que esta herencia literaria todavía necesita ser recuperada.

Introduction to Indigenous Literary Criticism in Canada collects 26 seminal critical essays indispensable to our understanding of the rapidly growing field of Indigenous literatures. The texts gathered in this collection, selected after extensive consultation with experts in the field, trace the development of Indigenous literatures while highlighting major trends and themes, including appropriation, stereotyping, language, land, spirituality, orality, colonialism, residential schools, reconciliation, gender, resistance, and ethical scholarship.

Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women’s Writing is a collection of nine essays, thematically arranged, dedicated to the works of women writing between 1828 and 1914. It is for all those readers who were certain that there had to be diverse, interesting, socially relevant voices in early Canadian women’s writing. It is, equally, for sceptics, who will find that early Canada is not bereft of women writers, or of writing of substance. When Lorraine McMullen published the collection of essays Re(dis)covering Our Foremothers in 1990, she considered the field in its infancy. As keen as literary historians and critics have been to assess the contributions of women to Canada’s early cultural scene, this collection moves beyond listing which women were writing in early Canada, and brings together a study of their journalistic and literary works. For a nation caught up in projects to enhance nation-building, and concerned with the development of its national literature, the essays reconnect with early literary works by women. Eighteen years after McMullen’s, this collection shows the progression along the path that hers initiated. Working with theories of genre, gender, socio-politics, literature, history, and drama, the essayists make cases not only for the women writing, but also for the literary voices they created to work for diversity and social change in Canada.

Eastern Encounters releases early Canadian women writers from a simple focus on autobiography and racial politics and interrogates their specific and sophisticated Asian influences. With a compelling reconstruction of historical context, Ganz has created perhaps the first book in a much-needed series that will revisit Canadian nationalism through the important cultural exchanges she examines. Though shaped with an Asian readership in mind, Eastern Encounters is an important work for all who wish to challenge the notion that Judeo-Christian traditions almost exclusively shaped early Canadian discourse.

Collection of essays focusing on issues of ethnicity, race, and gender.

Racial, Ethnic, Gender and Class Representations in Margaret Laurence’s Writings is a study on Canada, Canadian literature and Margaret Laurence’s works in particular, thus addressing various kinds of readership. This book avoids the danger of limiting the approach to solely focusing attention on Canada by presenting a thorough analysis of various literary genres, allowing the book to be of interest to all literature lovers. Furthermore, the book explores the parallelism between life and fiction, emphasising Laurence’s biographic and realist elements and their influence on the writer’s fictional writing, revealing real and imaginary worlds which would appeal to anybody’s literary needs. This major contribution to the already existent criticism of Margaret Laurence’s works lies in the analysis of her work as an entity, balancing both terms of the common binary oppositions: fiction versus non-fiction, Africa versus Canada, white versus Black or Metis. In spite of critical comments which might be raised, Andreea Topor-Constantin comments on how the voice of the marginal makes itself heard throughout the author’s books, underlying Laurence’s emphasis on characterisation and her genuine concern for people. This book covers all aspects of Laurence’s life and fiction: from the African to the writer’s Canadian background, from adults’ to children’s literature, from novels to short stories, from essays to letters, in order to challenge readers’ perceptions of race, ethnicity, gender and class.