National plots : historical fiction and changing ideas of Canada / edited by Andrea Cabajsky and Brett Josef Grubisic.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Cabajsky, Andrea, 1971- editor.

Grubisic, Brett Josef, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National characteristics, Canadian, in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (277 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Waterloo, Ontario : Wilfrid Laurier University Press, [2010]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Fiction that reconsiders, challenges, reshapes, and/or upholds national narratives of history has long been an integral aspect of Canadian literature. Works by writers of historical fiction (from early practitioners such as John Richardson to contemporary figures such as Alice Munro and George Elliott Clarke) propose new views and understandings of Canadian history and individual relationships to it. Critical evaluation of these works sheds light on the complexity of these depictions. The contributors in National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada critic

Contents:

Part one. A Usable Past? New Questions, New Directions

"A Trading Shop So Crooked a Man Could Jump through the Cracks": Counting the Cost of Fred Stenson's Trade in the Hudson's Bay Company Archive / Kathleen Venema

Past Lives: Aimee Laberge's Where the River Narrows and the Transgenerational Gene Pool / Cynthia Sugars

The Orange Devil: Thomas Scott and the Canadian Historical Novel / Albert Braz

State of Shock: History and Crisis in Hugh MacLennan's Barometer Rising / Robert David Stacey

"And They May Get it Wrong, After All": Reading Alice Munro's "Meneseteung" / Tracy Ware

Part two. Unconventional Voices: Fiction versus Recorded History

Windigo Killing: Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road / Herb Wyile

Telling a Better Story: History, Fiction, and Rhetoric in George Copway's Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation / Shelley Hulan

The Racialization of Canadian History: African-Canadian Fiction, 1990-2005 / Pilar Cuder-Dominguez

Turning the Tables / Aritha van Herk

Part three. Literary Histories, Regional Contexts

"To Free Itself, and Find Itself": Writing a History for the Prairie West / Claire Campbell

"Old Lost Land": Loss in Newfoundland Historical Fiction / Paul Chafe

Imagining Vancouvers: Burning Water, Ana Historic, and the Literary (Un) Settling of the Pacific Coast / Owen Percy

Too Little Geography; Too Much History: Writing the Balance in "Meneseteung" / Dennis Duffy.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613809858

9781282166783

1282166786

9781554581610

1554581613

OCLC:

759157084