Canadian Literature

Faye Hammill

Sept 2007 · Edinburgh University Press

About this eBook

An important critical study of Canadian literature, placing internationally successful anglophone Canadian authors in the context of their national literary history. While the focus of the book is on twentieth-century and contemporary writing, it also charts the historical development of Canadian literature and discusses important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors. The chapters focus on four central topics in Canadian culture: Ethnicity, Race, Colonisation; Wildernesses, Cities, Regions; Desire; and Histories and Stories. Each chapter combines case studies of five key texts with a broad discussion of concepts and approaches, including postcolonial and postmodern reading strategies and theories of space, place and desire. Authors chosen for close analysis include Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen, Thomas King and Carol Shields.

About the author

Faye Hammill is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Strathclyde. She is the author of Literary Culture and Female Authorship in Canada1760-2000(2003), co-editor of the Encyclopaedia of British Women'sWriting 1900-1950(2006), and editor of The British Journal of Canadian Studies.