#214 (Autumn 2012)

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Editorial

Margery Fee

• How Anarchist is Canadian Literature? (p. 6 - 13)
• Subjects: Biography, British Columbia, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Politics

Articles

Germaine Warkentin

• The Age of Frye: Dissecting the Anatomy of Criticism, 1957-1966 (p. 15 - 29)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  This article explores the earliest reviews of the Anatomy of Criticism, constructing a microhistory of the moment when the unsuspecting critics of 1957-1966 first encountered Northrop Frye’s massive new critical theory. Their long-forgotten reviews reveal the critical concepts they brought to the attempt to understand Frye’s ideas, and illustrate why criticism as they understood it proved vulnerable when, with equal suddenness, in 1966 the Age of Derrida superseded what Harold Bloom would call The Age of Frye. Though the few Canadian reviewers (with one exception) spoke with the same voice as those in the US and England, the long-term consequences of Frye’s theories were very different on native ground. Only once did Frye himself debate his critics directly, and though the ideas of the Anatomy inform all his later work, the critical path he himself was choosing in the same decade would lead neither to Paris nor New Haven.

• Subjects: Literary Criticism

Andrea King

• Haunting Love in Anne Hébert's Les fous de Bassan and Mary Novik's Conceit (p. 31 - 45)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  In this paper, I explore how the lack of a relationship with the other manifests itself through the figure of the female revenant in Canadian author Mary Novik’s Conceit (2007) and Québécois author Anne Hébert’s Les fous de Bassan (1982). The former novel stages the invocation and welcoming of the revenant, Ann Donne, on the part of her daughter, Pegge, who hopes to learn from the ghost the secret of love. Anne Hébert’s novel, on the other hand, figures a series of unwelcome female revenants who slip through various characters’ psychic barriers and are in turn chased away. In both cases the daughter is the privileged medium or agent of the ghostly encounter. I propose to show how the female apparitions in the two novels, despite their differences, trace a path back to a similar gendered suffocation within the couple, whether literal (as in the case of Les fous de Bassan), or figurative (as in the case of Conceit).

• Subjects: Comparative, Feminism, Gender, Gothic, Historical Fiction, Novel, Quebec, Twentieth Century, Women's Literature, Women's Studies

Joanne Leow

• Mis-mappings and Mis-duplications: Interdiscursivity and the Poetry of Wayde Compton (p. 47 - 66)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  With his poems in the book Performance Bond (2004), African Canadian poet and theorist Wayde Compton has remapped the contexts of immigration, history and multiculturalism in British Columbia. This paper will look specifically at how Compton uses the intertexts of history, literary theory and popular culture to challenge official histories and the exclusion of Canada from global black culture.

• Subjects: Afro-Canadian, Diaspora, Memory & Identity, Multiculturalism, Postmodernism, Transnationalism

Ana María Fraile-Marcos

• Urban Heterotopias and Racialization in Kim Barry Brunhuber’s Kameleon Man (p. 68 - 89)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  This paper reads Kim Barry Brunhuber’s novel Kameleon Man as an important exploration of different heterotopian spaces offering a reflection of our contemporary society in terms of the production and consumption of culture, racialization and identity. Stacey Schmidt, a twenty-one year-old black student, appears as a modern flâneur moving in urban landscapes from one heteretopia to the next in his quest for success in the fashion industry as a mixed-race model. He is also acutely aware of his own shifting positionality hinging on the ambiguous sign and site of the hyphen, which has been described by Fred Wah as that marked (or unmarked) space that both binds and divides. This heno-poetic (Grk heno-, one) punct, this flag of the many in the one, yet 'less than one and double' (Bhabha 177), is the operable tool that both compounds difference and underlines sameness (Faking 72-73). Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I will draw from the European philosophical tradition of Foucault and Benjamin as well as from urban studies, and will put these in conversation with some recent Canadian critical mixed-race theory in order to bring into view the specificity of Stacey’s experience as an urban, racialized, mixed-race Canadian man.

• Subjects: Afro-Canadian, Transnationalism, Twenty-First Century, Urban Novel

Thinking Together:

A Forum on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing

Susan Gingell and Deanna Reder

• Introduction: Indigenizing the Author Meets Critics Forum (p. 91 - 93)
• Abstract: Show/hide

  The original live forum on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing brought together the author of only the second monograph by an Indigenous literary critic in Canada with three critics, who discussed her recently published work in front of members of the Canadian Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (CACLALS) and the Association of Bibliotherapy and Applied Literatures (IABAL). Following the live event, the panelists submitted written versions of their contributions to the convenors of the forum, allowing all centrally involved to reflect further on the thoughts of the other panelists and of those in the audience who offered further ideas.

• Subjects: Canadian Studies, First Nations, Literary Criticism

Allison Hargreaves

• These Shared Truths: Taking Back Our Spirits and the Literary-Critical Practice of Decolonization (p. 94 - 100)
• Subjects: Canadian Studies, First Nations, Literary Criticism

Daniel Heath Justice

• Literature, Healing, and the Transformational Imaginary: Thoughts on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing (p. 101 - 108)
• Subjects: Canadian Studies, First Nations, Literary Criticism

Kristina Fagan Bidwell

• What Stories Do: A Response to Episkenew (p. 109 - 116)
• Subjects: Canadian Studies, First Nations, Literary Criticism

Jo-Ann Episkenew

• Indigenizing Author Meets Critics: Collaborative Indigenous Literary Scholarship (p. 117 - 127)
• Subjects: Canadian Studies, First Nations, Literary Criticism

Poems

M. Travis Lane

• Cenote (p. 14)

M. Travis Lane

• The Ogre's Yard (p. 30)

Chris Hutchinson

• Henry the Forgotten (p. 46)

Melanie Pierluigi

• Heaven-sent (p. 67)

Bill Howell

• An Absence of Team Spirit (p. 90)

Chris Hutchinson

• Legion (p. 128)

Book Reviews

Canada: Migration and Exile (p. 129 - 130)

by Suzanne Marshall

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Fluid Exile: Jewish Exile Writers in Canada 1940-2006 by Eugen Banauch
2. Migration and Fiction: Narratives of Migration in Contemporary Canadian Literature by Martin Loschnigg and Maria Löschnigg

Subjects: Cultural Geography, Diaspora, Essays, Holocaust, Immigrant, Jewish-Canadian , Literary Criticism, Transnationalism

True and Not So True (p. 131 - 132)

by Karen Charleson

Book(s) reviewed:

1. As Long as the Rivers Flow by James Bartleman
2. Grandpère by Janet Romain
3. Northern Kids by Linda Goyette

Subjects: Canadian Folklore, Cultural Geography, First Nations, Native Studies, Northern Canada

A Green Turn: Western Canadian Writers and Ecofiction (p. 132 - 134)

by Rebecca Raglon

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Falling from Grace by Ann Eriksson
2. Flight of the Hummingbird: A Parable for the Environment by Michael Nicholl Yahgulanaas
3. Sila's Revenge by Jamie Bastedo
4. The Darkening Archipelago: A Cole Blackwater Mystery by Stephen Legault

Subjects: Ecocriticism

Texte et image (p. 134)

by Emmanuel Bouchard

Book(s) reviewed:

1. L’essence scripturale du trait gravé : Les livres d’artiste de Lucie Lambert by Réjean Beaudoin

Subjects: Art

Revisiting Demeter and Persephone (p. 135 - 136)

by Maureen Moynagh

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Naturally Woman: The Search for Self in Black Canadian Women’s Literature by Sharon Morgan Beckford

Subjects: Women's Literature

Vues sur l’ossuaire (p. 136 - 137)

by Daniel Laforest

Book(s) reviewed:

1. La voix et l’os: Imaginaire de l’ascèse chez Saint-Denys Garneau et Samuel Beckett by Frédérique Bernier

Subjects: Canadian Studies, Comparative, Culture, Francophone, Irish-Canadian , Literary Criticism, Memory & Identity, Modernism, Novel, Philosophy, Poetry, Quebec, Religion, Twentieth Century

Critical Ecology and Critical Theory (p. 137 - 138)

by Lisa Szabo-Jones

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises by Andrew Biro

Subjects: Ecocriticism, Economics, History, Landscape/Space, Literary Theory, Media & Communications, Nationalism, Philosophy, Politics, Science, Social Sciences, Transnationalism, Twentieth Century, Twenty-First Century, Working Class

Familiar and Strange (p. 139 - 141)

by Moberley Luger

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster
2. Redemption Rain by Jennifer Rahim
3. Vox Humana by E. Alex Pierce

Subjects: Poetry

Telling, Retelling, and Rebelling (p. 141 - 142)

by Patricia Godbout

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer by Brian Busby

Subjects: Canadian Studies, Cultural Geography

Digital Innovation (p. 142 - 145)

by Karl Jirgens

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Digital Diversity: Youth, Equity, and Information Technology by E. Dianne Looker and Ted D. Naylor
2. The Technological Imperative in Canada: An Intellectual History by R. Douglas Francis
3. Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage: A Critical Discourse by Fiona Cameron and Sarah Kenderdine

Subjects: Cultural Studies

Entre essai et roman (p. 145 - 146)

by Sébastien Couvrette

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Pourquoi j’ai fondé Le Devoir: Henri Bourassa et son temps by Mario Cardinal

Subjects: Biography, Quebec, Twentieth Century

YA Books a "Mixed Bag" (p. 146 - 147)

by Lynn (J. R.) Wytenbroek

Book(s) reviewed:

1. And Everything Nice by Kim Moritsugu
2. The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
3. Vancouver Kids by Lesley McKnight

Le bonheur des chats (p. 147 - 148)

by Ziyan Yang

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Espèces by Ying Chen

Subjects: Asian Canadian, Novel, Quebec

The Silvering Screen (p. 148 - 149)

by Josephine Dolan

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema by Sally Chivers

Subjects: Film

Queer Retrospectives (p. 149 - 150)

by Moynan King

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Outspoken: A Canadian Collection of Lesbian Scenes and Monologues by Susan G. Cole
2. Queer Theatre in Canada by Rosalind Kerr
3. This One's Going to Last Forever by Nairne Holtz

Subjects: Essays, Feminism, Gay/Lesbian, Gender, Historiography, Literary Criticism, Queer Theory, Sexuality, Theatre History, Women's Literature, Women's Studies

Why Study the Humanities? (p. 150 - 152)

by Nathalie Cooke

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Retooling the Humanities: The Culture of Research in Canadian Universities by Daniel Coleman and Smaro Kamboureli

Subjects: Twentieth Century

A Young Woman Hungers (p. 152 - 153)

by Jan Lermitte

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Hunger Journeys by Maggie de Vries

Subjects: Children's Literature, Gender, Historical Fiction, History, Home & Family, International Conflict, Twentieth Century, War , World War II

David Meet David (p. 153 - 154)

by Douglas Barbour

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Watermelon Kindness by David Donnell
2. Why Are You So Long and Sweet: Collected Long Poems by David W. McFadden

Subjects: Anthologies, Poetry

Faith or Doubt? (p. 154 - 155)

by Kate Douglas

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Burdens of Proof: Faith, Doubt, and Identity in Autobiography by Kate Douglas

Subjects: Autobiography

Recovery and Repression (p. 155 - 157)

by Bart Vautour

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Champagne and Meatballs: Adventures of a Canadian Communist by Bert Whyte and Larry Hannant
2. Seeing Reds: The Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada's First War on Terror by Daniel Francis

Subjects: Historiography, History, International Conflict, Journalism, Life Writing, Politics, Travel Writing, War , Working Class

L’Ethos de la fin (p. 157 - 158)

by David Beaudin-Gagné

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Comme dans un film des frères Coen by Bertrand Gervais
2. M. by Hans-Jürgen Greif

Subjects: Francophone, Novel, Postmodernism, Quebec, Twenty-First Century

Genus Envy (p. 158 - 160)

by Owen Percy

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Ape House by Sara Gruen
2. The Honey Locust by Jeffery Round

Subjects: Animal Studies, Eastern European, Ecocriticism, International Conflict, Memory & Identity, Nationalism, Ontario, Postmodernism, Science, War

Theatrical Criticism in Montreal at the Turn of the Century: Trapped Between Ideology and Aesthetics (p. 160)

by Dominique Lafon

Book(s) reviewed:

1. L’Éveil culturel: Théâtre et presse à Montréal, 1898-1914 by Hervé Guay

Subjects: Art, Drama, Francophone, Journals

Alphabet's End (p. 160 - 162)

by T. K. Pratt

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Dictionary of American Regional English: Volume 5, Sl-Z by Joan Houston Hall

Subjects: Language/Linguistics

Recuperating the City (p. 162 - 163)

by Maia Joseph

Book(s) reviewed:

1. City of Love and Revolution: Vancouver in the Sixties by Lawrence Aronsen
2. Imagining Toronto by Amy Lavender Harris

Subjects: British Columbia, Canadian Studies, Culture, Landscape/Space, Ontario, Social Sciences, Twentieth Century, Twenty-First Century, Urban Novel

Not Just for Children (p. 163 - 164)

by Dee Horne

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Fox on the Ice / Maageesees Maskwameek Kaapit by Tomson Highway and Brian Deines
2. Tales from the Tundra: A Collection of Inuit Stories by Ibi Kaslik, Louise Flaherty, and Anthony Brennan
3. The Caribou Feed Our Soul by Pete Enzoe, Mindy Willett, and Tessa Macintosh

Subjects: Children's Literature, First Nations

Contemplating Nostalgia (p. 164 - 165)

by Alexis Foo

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Beckett Soundings by Inge Israel
2. Burning House by Richard Lemm
3. The Truth of Houses by Ann Snowcroft

Subjects: Poetry

Elemental Voices (p. 166 - 167)

by Robert Lecker

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Modern Canadian Poets by Todd Swift and Evan Jones
2. Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry by Susan McMaster

Subjects: Anthologies, Poetry

Anishinaabenendamon (p. 166)

by Margaret Noori

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Think Indian: Languages Are Beyond Price by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm and Basil Johnson

Subjects: Canadian Studies, Cultural Studies

How to Be Here (p. 168 - 169)

by Allison Calder

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Goodlands: A Meditation and History on the Great Plains by Frances W. Kaye
2. Man Facing West by Don Gayton

Subjects: Canadian Studies, Cultural Geography, Cultural Studies, Essays, First Nations, Landscape/Space, Prairie Writing

Comme dans un film de Sergio Leone (p. 169 - 170)

by Krzysztof Jarosz

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Clandestino by Sergio Kokis

Flânerie, Tragedy (p. 171 - 172)

by Mark Harris

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Tout bouge autour de moi by Dany Laferrière

Subjects: Journalism

Writing Chinese Diaspora (p. 172 - 174)

by Shao-Pin Luo

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Lily in the Snow by Yan Li

Subjects: Asian Canadian

Resignation or Wonder (p. 174 - 175)

by Kathryn Carter

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod
2. The End of the Ice Age by Terence Young

Subjects: Ontario

Textual (De)colonizations (p. 175 - 176)

by Renate Eigenbrod

Book(s) reviewed:

1. First Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Collaborative Authorship by Sophie McCall

Subjects: Canadian Studies

Beyond Domesticity (p. 176 - 177)

by Suzanne James

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Out of the Box by Michell Mulder
2. She Said/She Saw by Norah McClintock
3. Stones for my Father by Trilby Kent

Subjects: Children's Literature

"good lip / service" (p. 177 - 178)

by Paul Watkins

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Embouchure by Kevin McNeilly

Subjects: Poetry

Discovery Passages (p. 178 - 181)

by Lorraine Weir

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Discovery Passages by Garry T. Morse

Subjects: Canadian Studies, First Nations

Dynamic Equivalences (p. 181 - 183)

by Sylvie Vranckx

Book(s) reviewed:

1. “That’s Raven Talk”: Holophrastic Readings of Contemporary Indigenous Literatures by Mareike Neuhaus

Subjects: First Nations, Language/Linguistics, Literary Criticism, Postcolonialism, Twentieth Century

Formally Enlightening (p. 181 - 183)

by Neil Querengesser

Book(s) reviewed:

1. A Pirouette and Gone by E.D. Blodgett
2. Apostrophes VII: Sleep, You, a Tree by E.D. Blodgett
3. Praha by E.D. Blodgett and Marzia Paton

Subjects: Poetry, Twenty-First Century

Family Secrets (p. 183 - 184)

by Gisèle M. Baxter

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Every Time We Say Goodbye by Jamie Zeppa
2. Miracleville by Monique Polak

Subjects: Childhood, Children's Literature, Culture, Gender, Home & Family, Novel, Ontario, Quebec, Regionalism

L’orientalisme au Québec ? (p. 184 - 185)

by Chris Reyns-Chikuma

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Asie de soi, Asie de l’autre: Récits et figures de l'altérité by Janusz Przychodzen

Subjects: Canadian Studies

Literary Thrills (p. 185 - 186)

by Brandon McFarlane

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Blue Light Project by Timothy Taylor
2. The Guardians by Andrew Pyper

Subjects: Crime & Detective, Urban Novel

L’histoire, autrement? (p. 186 - 188)

by Valérie Lebrun

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Histoire littéraire des femmes : cas et enjeux by Chantal Savoie

Subjects: Feminism, Women's Literature, Women's Studies

British Columbia's Iliad? (p. 188 - 189)

by Mark Diotte

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Inverted Pyramid by Bertrand W. Sinclair

Subjects: British Columbia, Novel

Budapest Boy in Canada (p. 189 - 190)

by Richard Teleky

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Geography of Arrival by George Sipos

Subjects: Cultural Studies

Only Connect (p. 190 - 191)

by Stella Algoo-Baksh

Book(s) reviewed:

1. The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das by Merrily Weisbord

Subjects: Biography, Indian/South Asian

Those Voices Speaking Now (p. 191 - 192)

by Neil Querengesser

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Rudy Wiebe: Collected Stories, 1955-2010 by Rudy Wiebe

Subjects: Cultural Studies, First Nations, Historical Fiction, Historiography, Mennonite, Multiculturalism, Nineteenth Century, Northern Canada, Prairie Writing, Settler Writing, Short Fiction, Twentieth Century

Canaries in the Coalmine (p. 192 - 193)

by David Leahy

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature by Herb Wyile

Subjects: Atlantic Canada, Cultural Studies, Globalization, Literary Criticism, Working Class

Last Pages: Stick Pen (p. 199 - 201)

by Laurie Ricou

Book(s) reviewed:

1. Canadian Hockey Literature by Jason Blake
2. Footprints: Canadian Sports Stories: Summer by Dave Toms
3. Now is the Winter: Thinking about Hockey by Jamie Dopp and Richard Harrison
4. Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman by Sheema Khan
5. Saskatchewan Sports: Lives Past and Present by Holden Stoffel
6. Sport in Canada: A History by Don Morrow and Kevin B. Wamsley

Subjects: Essays, Immigrant, Nationalism, Sports Writing

Opinions & Notes

Kevin Roberts

• VOIR DIRE as Fictional Structural Procedure in Tay John (p. 194 - 198)
• Subjects: British Columbia, Life Writing, Novel