ENGLISH 676.11 - Historical Explorations within the Contemporary Canadian Novel

Instructor: Prof. Aritha van Herk (vanherk [at] ucalgary [dot] ca)

Course Description

This course will examine various readings of history's inflected space as represented within contemporary Canadian fiction.

The Canadian "historical novel" has proceeded from a moment of narrative transparency to a position that questions its own reading of history's wounds, denouncing the texture of received information and yet imposing a narrative order. Can such referential restraints provide a space within which the assumptions of particular social, cultural, and historical moments be examined and critiqued? Is this focus nostalgic or revisionist? Contemporary Canadian historiography appears to be interested in examining subversive or unheroic characters who nevertheless occupy a time and space emblematic of "national character." At the same time, historiographic representations of landscape, gender, class, region and religion encompass economic, social, and cultural contingencies, all relevant to the construction of a literature within a nation diverse and dispersed in terms of cultural coherence.

This course will apprehend these questions by reading a selection of novels that look to history or a particular historical moment as their initiating impulse. Students will be expected to undertaking close reading of primary texts, and to research in detail their historical referents. Students will also be expected to read widely theoretical and critical materials related to historiographic fiction. The goal of this course is to explore an area of Canadian literature that is rich and dense, much studied and yet so obvious that it is almost taken for granted. Questions about the national canon will necessarily be raised as well as questions of validity and cultural contingency. The outcome should enable students to read richly allusive texts with close attention, to analyze their narrative positioning, and to work across literature and history in terms of cultural critique.

This course will promote an inquiry-based learning experience for graduate students. Assignments will include in-class seminar presentations, as well as the preparation of three research papers, short, medium, and long. Each student will all contribute to class discussion and analysis and to a larger class bibliography of relevant criticism and theory. Since many of the novels to be studied are long and demanding, students are encouraged to read the primary texts in advance of the class.

Initial list of Primary Texts

Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

George Bowering, Burning Water

Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

Timothy Findley, Famous Last Words

Judy Fong Bates, Midnight at the Dragon Cafe

Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen

Greg Hollingshead, Bedlam

Elizabeth Hay, A Student of Weather

Wayne Johnston, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

Joy Kogawa, Obasan

Robert Kroetsch, Man from the Creeks

Robert Kroetsch, The Words of My Roaring

Sky Lee, Disappearing Moon Cafe

Hugh MacLennan, Barometer Rising

Daphne Marlatt, Ana Historic

Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

David Adams Richards, The Friends of Meager Fortune

Fred Stenson, The Trade

Susan Swan, The Biggest Modern Woman in the World

Jane Urquhart, The Whirlpool

Guy Vanderhaege, The Last Crossing

Thomas Wharton, Icefields

Rudy Wiebe, The Scorched-Wood People

Michael Winter, The Big Why