The Rock Observed : Studies in the Literature of Newfoundland / Patrick O'Flaherty.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Flaherty, Patrick, Author.

Series:

Heritage

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canadian literature--Newfoundland and Labrador--History and criticism.

Canadian literature.

Newfoundland and Labrador.

Newfoundland and Labrador--History.

Newfoundland and Labrador--In literature.

Newfoundland and Labrador--Intellectual life.

Genre:

History.

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (222 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Since the beginnings of white settlement in Newfoundland, writers have set down greatly varying impressions of its landscape and distinctive culture. Descriptions of the land’s abundance and beauty collide with reports of its unrelieved barrenness. The image of a ‘barbarous, perfidious, and cruel’ people is countered by testimony to their shrewdness, resourcefulness, and good humour. The Rock Observed is a study of how Newfoundland has been perceived over the centuries by the islanders themselves and by outsiders. It offers an integrated survey of Newfoundland literature, culture, and history. It illustrates the forces that have made Newfoundland a special place and Newfoundlanders a special people, ‘a breed apart.’Against a background of political, economic, and cultural history, Patrick O’Flaherty submits the conflicting literary impressions of his island to a searching critical analysis. He finds the writings of explorers, missionaries, settlers, adventurers, novelists, and poets to be limited, or enlivened, by their own characters and preconceptions. There emerges a sympathetic but unsentimental picture of Newfoundland and its people, informed throughout by O’Flaherty’s keen awareness, based on an outport upbringing, of what Newfoundland has been and is.

Contents:

'It passeth England": literature of discovery and early settlement, 1497-1670

Fishers of men: three missionaries in eighteenth-century Newfoundland

Walking new ground: books by two Newfoundland pioneers, 1770-1822

The triumph of sentiment: history and commentary, 1793-1895

The lure of the north: fiction and travel literature, 1850-1905

Emigrant muse: E.J. Pratt and Newfoundland, 1882-1907

Bridging two world: Margaret Duley's fiction, 1936-42

Visions and revisions: some writers in the new Newfoundland

The case of George Tuff: a concluding note.

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

1-4875-7783-4

OCLC:

1153473777