Imagining Culture : New World Narrative and the Writing of Canada

Many former members of European empires have demonstrated a need to overcome the colonial process and assert a "postcolonial" culture. Applying postcolonial analysis to Canadian literature, Margaret Turner argues that many nineteenth- and twentieth-century Canadian texts are engaged in the creation of a new discursive space and that new world conditions have decisively informed the discourse of fiction of English Canada. Turner examines the manner in which a new world culture represents itself, creates its origins, and constructs and understands the construction of its cultural history. She supports her theory with an analysis of paradigmatic texts by John Richardson, Frederick Philip Grove, Sheila Watson, Robert Kroetsch, and Jane Urquhart that articulate the predicament of the new world writer. Imagining Culture reveals the haunting of language and imagination that attends the search for origins and belonging, and shows how Canadian writers enact the processes of inhabiting the new world and imagining its culture. Contents Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: "Here there be monsters" 2 John Richardson: "A World of Our Own Creation" 3 Frederick Philip Grove: "No Language of My Own" 4 Sheila Watson: On Soft Ground 5 Robert Kroetsch: Re-placing Language 6 Jane Urquhart: Writing the New World 7 Conclusion: Imagining Culture Notes Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P R S T U V W This book is concerned with the manner in which a new world culture represents itself, creates its own origins, and constructs and understands its construction of its own cultural history within the ambivalent discursive space of what has been called the middle ground of post-colonialism.