ENG252Y1 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Canada, Colonialism, Wilderness
ENG252Y1
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Canadian Lit – Intro
• CanLit as an institution, as a distinct disciplinary field
• CanLit and its complex relation to the Canadian nation-state
• Exploration narratives & colonialism
• Post-colonialism
• Multiculturalism/racialization
• Gender & Sexuality
• Land – wilderness – the natural environment
• Politics of representation
• Formal & aesthetic concerns
• Material conditions
• Literary movements (modernism, regionalism, postmodernism, etc.)
• Larger contexts (globalisation, transnationalism, etc.)
CanLit
• As a national literature: assumed to reflect Canadian identity
• Suggesting a homologous relationship between human subjects – citizens –
as reflected in
• literature and their community
Iagied couity Beedict Aderso
• A community that is socially constructed
• Different from an actual community
• Because it is not based on daily interactions between its members
CanLit as an institution
• Constructed as a literary field, a tradition, that has been instrumental in the
making of the nation-state’s identity ut that has also been
instrumentalized by the nation-state
• How we understand a body of words
Nation-state
• Not a stable category
o Canada means different things to different people
• Often a result of complex negotiations
o Internal contradictions within the nation state
o Leads to conflicts and resolutions
National imaginary
• Refers to the visible and less apparent ways in which a nation express what it
takes to be its distinctiveness
• The result of how a nation-state exercises its dominant self-identity
o Tries to educate people and create citizens
find more resources at oneclass.com
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• Articulates a cohesive image of what constitutes the nation
• Product of different ideologies and values
A literary tradition
• Is simultaneously the result of processes of differentiation and identification
o Differentiating between itself and other traditions outside of itself
o Establishing itself by identifying common elements among the
authors it includes
• Differentiation and identification
Literary canon
• A canon refers to literary works that presumably capture the spirit of a given
culture (nation), works that are taken to express lasting values and thus have
universal significance
The notion of canon
• Comes from the bible and the church
• The bible includes on those gospels that are deemed to be authentic
• Canonical works are expected to withstand the passage of time (e.g. homer,
Shakespeare)
• Universal values: understood and enforced by the majority (respect for life)
o Uniersal response to Aylan Kurdi’s droning galanising the puli to
help Syria
Canonization / formation
• A process by which a work of art is seemed to be of great aesthetic and
national value and whose meaning supports the national imaginary
• Cultural capital of the nation state
• Canon is not stable – it is always changing with the influences
For next week:
• Finish Icefields – Thomas Wharton
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
