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Canadian literature

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Canadian literature may be divided in two parts, somewhat like a tree with two great roots. One root is the deeply buried culture of France. The other is just as deeply buried in the traditions of England. One part of Canadian literature is written in French, the other in English. But the branches of this tree are purely Canadian. Authors and readers of each literature are gaining more and more knowledge of the other, in the original or in translation.

How to describe the literature of a nation is often debatable, and is also in natural flux throughout the nation's history, so this beginner's guide to Canadian literature will offer links to as many actual Canadian authors as possible so the reader can weigh what is being said with first-hand research of his or her own.

Contents

Characteristics of Canadian Literature

History of modern literature

The early modern period
16th century in literature > 17th century in literature
European literature in the 18th century
1700s | 1710s | 1720s | 1730s | 1740s | 1750s | 1760s | 1770s | 1780s | 1790s | 1800s
Modern Literature, 19th century
1800s | 1810s | 1820s | 1830s | 1840s | 1850s | 1860s | 1870s | 1880s | 1890s | 1900s
Modern Literature, 20th century
Modernism | Structuralism | Deconstruction | Poststructuralism | Postmodernism | Post-Colonialism | Hypertext fiction
1900s | 1910s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s
Modern Literature in Europe
Modern Literature in the Americas
Argentine literature > | Literature of Canada | | | | Mexican literature | | Literature of the United States
Australasian Literature
Australian literature > New Zealand literature
Modern Asian Literature
| | Literature of Pakistan | Kannada literature |Tamil literature | Hindi literature | Urdu literature | Indian writing in English | Bengali literature | Marathi literature | Malayalam literature | Japanese literature | Vietnamese literature
African Literature
African literature > | South African literature
Other topics
History of theater > History of science fiction | History of ideas | Intellectual history |
Canada’s literature whether written in English or French reflects three main parts of Canadian experience: (1) nature, (2) frontier life, and (3) Canada’s position in the world.

First, Canadian authors often emphasise the effects of climate and geography on the life and work of their people. Canada’s rugged mountains, roaring rivers, and harsh winters contrast sharply with its rich valleys, peaceful lakes, and mild summers.

Second, frontier life is part of Canada’s experience that appears frequently in its literature. Many authors have taken themes from the steady march westward across Canada. Others have found drama in continuing battles to win a living on the sea. Still others have emphasised the ever-present frontier to the north, the constant challenge to expand a foothold in the Arctic. Canadian authors do not regard new lands as the only frontier. They feel people face exciting challenges in the outposts of the experience.

Third, Canada’s position in the world profoundly affects many Canadian writers. French Canadians often feel surrounded by their English-speaking neighbours. They have made a determined effort to preserve their own institutions and culture. But English Canadians frequently have a similar feeling of being surrounded by the people and culture of the United States. Many novels and poems show how Canadian writers feel about such problems.

The problem of Canadian literature

Canadian literature may be more difficult to discuss than most because of Canada's unique geographical and historical situation. Therefore, just as one piece of the Canadian social puzzle has often been, "is there a Canadian identity?," one recurrently important piece of the Canadian literature puzzle has been the question, "Is there a Canadian literature at all?"

This has been an ongoing point of debate since the mid-1800s, and is still being discussed in literary circles today. For example, a quick Internet search for university syllabi on Canadian literature courses will offer an overwhelming majority of professors who still discuss whether or not "Canadian" literature exists. For instance, one postmodern Can. lit. course offered as recently as 2002 at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, includes this in the course syllabus:

"The course starts off with a brief consideration of the 'problem' of Canadian identity: Is there such a thing? If so, what is it? And does that identity manifest itself in a national literature that is distinctly different from, say, British or U.S. literature? These are the sort of questions that get raised in Kroetsch's essays and Atwood's Surfacing."
In fact, it has frequently been suggested that the question, "what is a Canadian?" is entangled very intricately with the question "what is Canadian literature?" in a way that does not happen to so great an extent with other literatures. Leon Surette writes, "a disproportionate amount of commentary on Canadian writing has been cultural history (or prophecy) rather than truly literary commentary."

At the end of the debates, the verdict almost always returned is that there is a literature and an "identity" distinctly Canadian. However, because of its size and breadth, Canadian literature is often broken into sub-categories.

There are at least three ways that, traditionally, critics and scholars have chosen to deal with the geographic size and cultural breadth of Canadian literature. The most common, by far, is to divide it by region or province. There are anthologies of "Eastern Canadian literature" or "Prairie literature," for example. Another way has been to divide it by categorising the authors. For instance, the literature of Canadian women, Acadians, Aboriginal peoples in Canada, and Irish-Canadians have been anthologised as bodies of work. A third way has been to divide it by literary period, such as "Canadian postmoderns" or "Canadian Poets Between the Wars."

Of course, as usual, Canadian literature is often studied in genre divisions as well, such as "poetry," "prose," "drama," and "criticism."

Traits of Canadian literature

The findings of those who believe that there is a distinctly Canadian body of literature include a prevalence of the following traits, in no particular order.
Canadian writer Robertson Davies, author of The Deptford Trilogy which included the famous book, Fifth Business.
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Canadian writer Robertson Davies, author of The Deptford Trilogy which included the famous book, Fifth Business.

French-Canadian literature

French-Canadian literature followed a very different evolutionary path than English literature. French-Canadian literature was less an appendage to the literature of France than English Canada's was to Great Britain. Rather, the struggle of French Canada was to create a literature whole cloth. From the early settlements until the 1820s Quebec had virtually no literature to speak of. There were a few historians, journalists, and learned priests who published but overall, output was very low.

It was the rise of Quebec patriotism and the 1837 Lower Canada Rebellion, combined with a modern system of primary school education that led to the first surge of French-Canadian fiction. L'influence d'un livre by Philippe-Ignace-Francois Aubert de Gaspé usually being regarded as the first French-Canadian novel. The genres which first become popular were the rural novel and the historical novel. Influences from France began to be felt, especially such authors as Balzac.

In 1866, Father Henri-Raymond Casgrain became one of Quebec's first literary theorists. He argued that literature's goal should be to project an image of proper Catholic morality. This view was accepted by most Québécois authors and much of what was written is generally considered bland and tedious. A few authors such as Louis-Honoré Fréchette and Arthur Buies did break accepted conventions and write engaging works.

This pattern continued until the 1930s when a new group of authors educated at the Université Laval and the Université de Montréal. Novels with psychological and sociological foundations began to become the norm. Authors such as Gabrielle Roy and Anne Hébert for the first time began to earn international acclaim. During this period, Quebec theatre, which had previously been melodramas and comedies, became far more involved.

The Canadian $5 banknote, featuring an excerpt from The Hockey Sweater.
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The Canadian $5 banknote, featuring an excerpt from The Hockey Sweater.

French-Canadian literature began to greatly expand with the turmoil of the Second World War, the beginnings of industrialization in the 1950s, and most especially the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s. French-Canadian literature also began to attract a great deal of attention globally, with Acadian novelist Antonine Maillet winning the Prix Goncourt. An experimental branch of Quebecois literature also developed, such as formalist poet Nicole Brossard. In 1979, the bifurcation between English and French Canada would come to the forefront again when French Canadian author Roch Carrier wrote the story The Hockey Sweater, which highlighted the cultural and social tensions between English and French speaking Canada.

See also: List of Quebec writers, Literature of Quebec, List of French Canadian writers from outside Quebec

Contemporary Canadian Literature: Late 20th to 21st Century

In the 1980s Canadian literature began to be noticed around the world. By the 1990s Canadian literature was viewed as some of the world's best and Canadian authors began to accumulate international awards. In 1992 Michael Ondaatje became the first Canadian to win the Booker Prize for The English Patient. Atwood won the Booker in 2000 for The Blind Assassin and Yann Martel won it in 2002 for The Life of Pi. Alistair Macleod won the 2001 IMPAC Award for No Great Mischief. Carol Shields's The Stone Diaries won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and in 1998 her novel Larry's Party won the Orange Prize.

Today Canadians still read much by foreign authors, but many Canadian books have been runaway best sellers.

Notable figures

Main Articles: List of Canadian writers
Margaret Atwood, one of Canada's most prolific and eminent writer
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Margaret Atwood, one of Canada's most prolific and eminent writer
. Canada only officially became a country on July 1, 1867, so some have argued that what was written there before that time was really the literature of British Subjects living away from Britain, French citizens away from France, etc. For example, Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill, English sisters who adopted the country as their own, moved to Canada in 1832. They recorded their experiences as pioneers in Parr Traill's The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Canadian Crusoes (1852), and Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush (1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853). However, both women wrote until their deaths, placing them in the country for more than 50 years and certainly well past Confederation. Moreover, their books often dealt with survival and the rugged Canadian environment -- these themes re-appear in other Canadian works, including Margaret Atwood's Survival. Moodie and Parr Traill's sister, Agnes Strickland, remained in England and wrote elegant royal biographies, creating a stark contrast between Canadian and English literatures.

However, one of the earliest "Canadian" writers virtually always included in Canadian literary anthologies is Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865), who died just two years before Canada's official birth. He is remembered for his comic character, Sam Slick, who appeared in The Clockmaker and other humorous works throughout Haliburton's life.

Arguably, the best-internationally-known living Canadian writer (especially after the recent passing of Canadian greats, Robertson Davies and Timothy Findley) is Margaret Atwood, a prolific novelist, poet, and literary critic. This group, along with Alice Munro were the first to elevate Canadian Literature to the world stage. During the post-war decades only a handful of books of any literary merit would be published each year in Canada and Canadian literature was viewed as an appendage to British and American writing. Much of what was produced dealt with extremely typical Canadiana such as the outdoors and animals, or events in Canadian history. Most of what Canadians read was written in the United States or Great Britain. Most of what was studied in Canadian schools and universities was also foreign.

Awards

The 1996 film adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's book The English Patient.
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The 1996 film adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's book The English Patient.

There are a number of notable Canadian awards for literature:

Awards For Children and Young Adult Literature:

See also

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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