ENG252Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Metanarrative, Canadian Shield, Postcolonialism
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Exam Revision Lecture
National Imaginary
-National Imaginary - tends to represent dominant views about what Canada is about
•we all participate in it but we aren’t always aware of the ideological forces at play
Modernism
-Formal, aesthetic innovation
-Canadian poets started thinking in terms of modernism
-Characterised by a sense of belatedness in CanLit
•also by a conflict between traditional, nationalistic forms of writing
•e.g. Canadian Writers Meet?
-Self Conscious attention to form
Modernity
-Tied to the Enlightenment tradition
-Notion of progress is dubious
•often occurs at the expense of someone or something
•e.g. The Last Spike, Icefields, Exploration Narratives
Wilderness
-One of the biggest literary tropes in CanLit
-Started off as being about nature that was encountered by the settlers
•it was so shocking and unfamiliar, so they defined it as wilderness
•threatened their own sense of self and values
-In the beginning, it was meant to be conquered, but eventually became a resource to
be explored, industrialised, taken advantage of, etc.
!1
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
-How the wilderness developed as theme in later literature
-Icefields, The Painted Door, Moodie, A History Lesson, The Laurentian Shield
Cosmopolitan subject / Mobility
-Freya
-Anil - diasporic subject who doesn’t feel a nostalgia and attachment to her homeland
•feels suffocated in her marriage
•privileged and educated
•made possible by her mobility
•she can never fully understand Sri Lanka again
Historiographic
-Fiction
•sets out to break the presumed objectivity
•draws attention to the very act of composing writing that represents what happened
in the past
•mediated by the act of writing and the subjective position of the people acting or
speaking of these events
•self reflexive
-Dulai, Badlands (field notes)
Hybridity
-Hybrid discourse/narrative
•something not pure or singular
•the elements that constitute the narrative do not get submerged or assimilated, they
maintain their differences
-Polyphonic - basically synonymous
•voices compete, but neither gets erased
!2
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
National imaginary - tends to represent dominant views about what canada is about: we all participate in it but we aren"t always aware of the ideological forces at play. Canadian poets started thinking in terms of modernism. Notion of progress is dubious: often occurs at the expense of someone or something, e. g. the last spike, ice elds, exploration narratives. One of the biggest literary tropes in canlit. Started off as being about nature that was encountered by the settlers: it was so shocking and unfamiliar, so they de ned it as wilderness, threatened their own sense of self and values. In the beginning, it was meant to be conquered, but eventually became a resource to be explored, industrialised, taken advantage of, etc. How the wilderness developed as theme in later literature. Ice elds, the painted door, moodie, a history lesson, the laurentian shield.
