Reference Sources For Canadian Literary Studies

Reference Sources for Canadian Literary Studies offers the first full-scale bibliography of writing on and in the field of Canadian literary studies. Approximately one thousand annotated entries are arranged by reference genre, with sub-groupings related to literary genre.

Canada's rich literary heritage, dominated by a multicultural and multilingual presence, reflects the country's unique history and experience. In addition, an emerging body of new writers is redefining both the geographic and metaphorical boundaries of Canadian literature. Coupled with the propagation of digital technologies, Canada's burgeoning publishing industry presents unique challenges for both the introductory and seasoned literary researcher. Literary Research and Canadian Literature: Strategies and Sources provides researchers with the tools to navigate Canada's multifaceted literary scene. This guide addresses the tools and best practices for selecting and evaluating print and electronic sources related to the extensive and varied literature of Canada. Beginning with an overview of the strategies needed to conduct online research, individual chapters examine general literary reference materials; relevant online library catalogs, including national and union library catalogs; scholarly journals; archival collections; microform and digital collections; periodicals, literary magazines, newspapers, and reviews; and Web and electronic resources. Special topics discussed include "little magazines," scholarly gateways, and cultural resources. The guide culminates in a chapter that illustrates the application of the strategies explored to solve a research problem. The strategies discussed within the guide are applicable to both canonical and lesser-known authors, therefore making this work relevant to anyone interested in researching Canadian literature.

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.

The format of this book is arbitrary and exact, the way paint is in a landscape by Alex Colville. It follows the program of the symposium that took place at the University of Ottawa, from April 25 to 27, 1986. As Bakhtin leaps from the sidelines to centre stage, as Derrida clambers out of orchestra pit into the prompter's box, and Lancan swings from the flies, as Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, Saussure, Barthes, and a throng of others rhubarb their way through the text, one recognizes just how connected all the disparate elements of this critical extravaganza really are.

To anyone who has crossed the Canadian prairies, the title of this book, Vertical Man/Horizontal World, will strike a responsive chord -- man stands alone in seemingly limitless landscape "as empty as nightmare". The stark isolation of man against the prairie's landscape is "so obvious" the author says, "that except for passing comments [in two studies of Canadian prairie fiction] no one has made a sustained analysis of the use of the prairie in Canadian fiction, or argued at any length for what most immediately unifies the literature of the prairie region." Author Ricou argues that man is intimidated by the vastness which so surrounds him, and "he will almost certainly wish to meet the challenge of this land, to say 'Look, look!' in whatever way he can, by raising a crop or a monument, by interpreting his experience in paint or words." Ricou traces this recurrent theme in prairie fiction from writers such as Frederick Philip Grove and Wallce Stegner, Edward McCourt and W.O. Mitchell, to Margaret Laurence and Robert Kroetsch. In tracing the relationship of man and land from the earliest writers of prairie fiction to the most recent, Ricou shows how the calm and benign relationship of man and land as exemplified, for instance, in the fiction of Robert Stead and W.O. Mitchell has changed in recent novels to a more dramatic confrontation. "[The novelists] find in [the landscape] an ideal mirror for the dilemma (and often the strength) of existential man." Critic Henry Keisel once wrote: "To conquer a piece of the continent, to put one's imprint upon virgin land, to say 'Here I am, for that I came", is as much a way of proving one's existence, as is Descartes' "cogito, ergo sum." Vertical Man/Horizontal World is an affirmation of Kreisel's statement. Slowly and cumulatively Ricou traces the image of man leaving his mark on the empty, sometimes nightmarish land of the Canadian prairie. "How do we fit our time and our place?" is a question posed by all the writers Ricou examines. "The answer," he says, "at this point in the evolution of Canadian prairie fiction, delivered with conviction . . . is: abruptly and uneasily, but brazenly and delightedly." This book is a sustained and penetrating look at the interrelationship of man and landscape in Canadian prairie fiction.

When "Canadian Literature in English" was first published by Longman in 1985 it was described (in the "Modern Language Review") as a standard reference work on the subject' and the best critical account of its subject that we possess so far'. The book was released in London and New York, as such things were done at the time, but never distributed particularly well in Canada, where it faded, rapidly, from view. W. J. Keith, writing in the Preface to the Revised Edition, admits his first inclination was to embark on a total rewrite of the Longman edition. On further consideration, however, Keith came to realize that the 1985 publication was completed at the close of a major phase in the Canadian literary tradition' and that the remarkable flowering that began to manifest itself in the middle of the twentieth century had run its course by the beginning of the new millennium.' That being the case, Keith would argue that a number of writers who had already achieved [ considerable stature further developed their reputations' (in the period 1985-2005) but only a few extended them'. Keith is also quick to admit that he has chosen to ignore utterly the popular' at the one extreme (Robert Service, Lucy Maud Montgomery) as well as the avant-garde' (bpnichol, Anne Carson) at the other, in favour of those authors whose style lends itself to the simple pleasure of reading, and to that end he dedicates his history to all those (including the general reading public whose endangered status is much lamented in the Polemical Conclusion'') who recognize and celebrate the dance of words.'