ENGLISH 609.46/509.26 - Herstory and History:Canadian Fiction of the First and Second World Wars
Instructor: Dr. Donna Coates
Tuesdays, 15:00 - 17:30
Mail to: dcoates [at] ucalgary [dot] ca
Course Description:
In the past decade, Canadian writers have produced an "explosion" of fiction about the nation's participation in the First and Second World Wars. These contemporary writers may have been drawn to these wars may be a result of what Marianne Hirsch terms "postmemory," which she defines as "a powerful form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation. Postmemory characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are displaced by the stories of the previous generation, shaped by traumatic events that can neither be fully understood nor re-created." If, as Hirsch asserts, "the desire to know the world as it looked and felt before our birth" is central to the fictional imagination, then returning to the world wars is a predictable undertaking for many Canadian writers.
The majority of the texts studied in this course will examine works by those who have imaginatively reconstructed the wars from a temporal distance. This revisionist fiction will inevitably raise important concerns about the cultural, racial, gender, class, and colonial biases of the version of history that has been provided in the past. The course will also consider several works by novelists who were either writing during the wars or shortly after. Because most of these writers are attempting to interpret and measure the events of the war and their far-reaching effects on their country, communities, families, and occasionally themselves, the subjects covered in this course are diverse and varied.
Among the subjects writers address are attitudes to patriotism, pacifism, conscription, and national mobilization; the growth of the women's movement; the role of the woman artist; the unique situation of children and adolescents in wartime; the notion of female solidarity; the role of memory; the dilemma of how to describe events and emotions for which no language seems sufficient; the use of military language as a strategy for overcoming oppression; attitudes to sexuality; attitudes to the military; the estrangement of servicemen from civilians and civilian life at home; attitudes to fascism and communism; the perils/pleasures of the cross-dressing soldier; the "hell" of peacetime for war brides; the denial of Jewish refugees; the impact of government policy on minorities/refugees; the impact of soldier-settlement programs; and the nature of heroism. As well, many texts which re-vision wartime periods are inextricably bound up with questions concerning the dropping of the atomic bomb; anti-Semitism, the Holocaust; and the large-scale displacement of the people of Europe.
Primary Texts: (to be selected from the following list)
First World War
L. M. Montgomery, Rill of Ingleside (1920)
Francis Marion Beynon, Aleta Dey (1919)
Charles Yale Harrison, Generals Die in Bed (1928)
Hugh MacLennan, Barometer Rising (1941)
Jane Urquhart, The Stone Carvers (2001)
Francis Itani, Deafening  (2003)
Mary Swan, The Deep (2002)
Kevin Major, No Man's Land (1995)
Jack Hodgins, Broken Ground 1998)
Timothy Findley, The Wars (1977)
Alan Cumyn, The Sojourn (2003)
Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road (2005Â
Second World War
Gwethalyn Graham, Earth and High Heaven (1944)
Colin McDougall, Execution (1958)
Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1981)
Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (1993)
Kathryn Govier, Angel Walk (1996)
Kerri Sakamoto, The Electrical Field (1998)
Kerri Sakamoto, One Hundred Million Hearts (2003)
Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (1996)
Timothy Findley, You Went Away (1996)
Timothy Findley, Famous Last Words (1981)
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (1992)
Dennis Bock, The Ash Garden (2001)
A course pack with selected stories from J. G. Sime's Sister Woman (1920); Mavis Gallant's Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories 1981); Joyce Marshall's A Private Place (1976); Margaret Laurence's A Bird in the House (1963); Rachel Wyatt's The Day Marlene Dietrich Died (1996); and Timothy Findley's Stones (1990).
ASSIGNMENTS for doctoral students will consist of two seminar presentations, two responses to seminar presentations, and one research paper (on three texts). Master's students and undergraduates will make one seminar presentation, one response to a seminar presentation, and one major research paper (on three texts). Students will also be required to submit two questions on the text under discussion for each class (except when they are giving or responding to presentations.)
