The thesis explores the vexed concept of Heimat in recent German culture. Heimat evokes an exclusive group, founded on the idea of the unity and homogeneity of its members. Conflicts arise around the concept because it constructs oppositions between those who belong and those who do not, insiders and outsiders, the domestic and known in opposition to the foreign and strange. Historically, the concept has been used to tell a story about the cohesion of the German nation; it has also, however, been used to assimilate, eliminate, or exile its Others. The thesis examines how the legacies of the concept and its narrative reverberate through the nation-building process of Germany today. The concept of Heimat is active in films, literature, the law and contemporary German society. The argument is that the concept of Heimat still shapes German identity in ways that use old forms and oppositions to respond to recent social changes. It is argued further that the tensions around the concept have not diminished, but are spreading into many different areas of German everyday life. Two films by Edgar Reitz provide the starting point for exploring the tensions around Heimat in contemorary German culture. Following readings of texts by Jewish-German, Austrian- German, Swiss-German, Persian-German, Rumanian-German, East and West German authors show the concept persisting in different forms with different consequences, according to the different cultural contexts. In each of these contexts, the concept of German Heimat produces both social cohesion and social tensions. As much as people are united by the concept, they are also driven apart by its differentiating and disintegrating mechanisms. Motivated by the search for communal intimacy, the concept also has the effect of controlling and manipulating what appears different and alien. As such a network of interests and strategies it is not merely closed, fixed and bounded, as desired perhaps by the dominant cultural groups, but rather open for contestation and negotiation within and across national borders.

This dissertation explores the relationship between the regulatory discourses of nationalism and sexuality as they operate in the cultural production and textual dissemination of contemporary Canadian literatures. Applying recent studies in postcolonial and queer theory to a number of works by gay and lesbian authors written across a broad spectrum of years, political perspectives, and genres, I seek to formulate a critical methodology which allows me to situate these works within the trajectory of Canadian canon-formation from the 1940s to the present. In so doing, I argue that the historical construction of Canadian literature and Canadian literary criticism upon an apparent absence of national identity—us encapsulated most tellingly in the "Where is here?" of Frye's "Conclusion"—masks nothing so much as the presence of a subversive and destabilizing sexual identity—"queer." The dissertation is made up of eight chapters: the first opens with a Sedgwickian survey of the "homosocial" underpinnings of several foundational texts of Canadian literature, before providing an overview—via George Mosse, Benedict Anderson, and Michel Foucault—of the theoretical parameters of the dissertation as a whole. Chapter two focuses on three nationally "ambivalent" and sexually "dissident" fictions by Timothy Findley. A comparative analysis of the homophobic criticism accompanying the sexual/textual travels of Patrick Anderson and Scott Symons serves as the basis of chapter three. Chapter four discusses the allegorical function of homosexuality in the nationalist theatre of Michel Tremblay, Rene-Daniel Dubois, and Michel Marc Bouchard. Chapter five examines how national and sexual borderlines become permeable in the lesbian-feminist translation poetics of Nicole Brossard and Daphne Marlatt. Issues of performativity (the repetition and reception of various acts of identification) are brought to the fore in chapters six and seven, especially as they relate to the (dis)located politics of Dionne Brand, and the (re)imagined communities of Tomson Highway and Beth Brant, respectively. Finally, chapter eight revisits some of the vexed questions of identity raised throughout the dissertation by moving the discussion of nationalisms and sexualities into the classroom.

This dissertation is a scholarly edition of the correspondence between the Canadian poet Irving Layton and the critic and historian of Canadian literature, Desmond Pacey; on November 3, 1954, Desmond Pacey wrote to Contact Press, inviting the poets Irving Layton, Louis Dudek and Raymond Souster to submit their recent work for discussion in an article on Canadian literature for The International Year Book. Pacey and Layton met in Montreal a few months later, and so began a long friendship and a lengthy correspondence which continued until Pacey’s death on July 4, 1975. The correspondence is an extremely important document in the history of Canadian poetry and criticism in the decisive decades following World War II because it so directly and extensively explores the crucial issues of the times: the function of the poet and the critic in contemporary society; the debate over a “cosmopolitan” versus a “native” aesthetic; the debate over a “mythopoeic” versus a “realist” approach to the creation of, and criticism of, poetry; and the attempt to define a position for the Jewish writer in a gentile society. But aside from this prolonged and invaluable theoretical discourse, and aside from the countless useful insights into the life and work of practically every writer active in Canada between 1954-1975, the letters between the two men are important because the two men were so vitally important to the development of a viable Canadian literature. The basic principle of this project’s editorial philosophy is the decision to abjure the “editorial pedantries” of the diplomatic text which tend to exclude the non—specialist educated public, and to assume greater flexibility in the standardization and regularization of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation and matters of format——placement of addresses, closings, postscripts and marginalia. Headnotes contain all textual information about the letter; transcriptions are in the main literal, but in the interest of consistency some standardization has been imposed. Footnotes follow each letter; cross—references are by letter and, where applicable, note number; when the reference is to a letter with a single footnote, no number is cited. These almost three thousand annotations are employed to identify individuals referred to in the text, to provide publication information on the works of Layton, Pacey, and numerous other individuals referred to in the text, to document and frequently quote from the reviews, articles, radio and television programs they discuss, to elucidate references to current events, and to provide miscellaneous but necessary background information on matters ranging from the private lives of the two correspondents to majcir vnts and isuë in the history of Canadian li’áttñ.

Dramatic literature and film are often political and work to deconstruct and dismantle some of the assumptions of a dominant ideology. Tomson Highway’s Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, and Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game, show how gender roles are used in oppression and show that other social categories like race, class, and sexuality are interrelated and constructed. This shows the hollowness of the so-called inherent categories that cause “naturalized” divisions between people and groups. Through exploring these works I hope to draw attention to how these artists use theater and film to educate their audiences, as well as challenge them to take control over complicated issues surrounding power and oppression. These writers encourage their audiences to employ social criticism and to re-evaluate the social order that is often naturalized through dominant ideology and discourse. / v, 104 leaves ; 29 cm.

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This thesis analyzes the representation of the Shoah in French-language Quebec literature. It first presents the numerous difficulties involved in the fictional representation of this genocide, which relate primarily to writers' authority: lacking the legitimacy of "true" witnesses, writers who address the topic run the risk of betraying the memory of those who were persecuted. The thesis then demonstrates that, despite theoretical obstacles, many novels and poems from Quebec touch upon the Shoah and express a feeling of guilt towards the victims as early as the 1950's. The last chapter postulates that since the 1980's, fiction has acquired a greater legitimacy and narrative forms used to represent the Shoah have diversified, due to the gradual disappearance of direct witnesses as well as the interval of time separating writers from the tragedy.

This thesis proposes to apply Queer theory as the framework for examining Michel Marc Bouchard's play Les Feluettes. This study is built around two methodological axes, one being the analysis of dialogue; the second, the application of Queer theory. Dialogue and staging are scrutinized in an effort to discover the Queer. The links between sex, power, language and knowledge will be specifically studied. The intention is to show how their relationship, based on opposition, can be modified by a subversive discourse. By way of introduction, a brief discussion of Queer theory will be presented to familiarize the reader with its origins, sources of inspiration and strategies of deconstruction. The first chapter will focus on the homosexual's interior monologue. Chapter two will focus on the homosexual's dialogue with other homosexuals. The third, and final chapter, will round out the analysis by studying the dialogue between the homosexual and heterosexuals. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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No description available.

The phenomenon of the farm attack has engendered an angry debate in South Africa today. Controversially, the South African media has paid great attention to violence against white farmers amidst a seemingly endless flood of violence against black farm workers. The now commonplace tales of farm attacks incite racial tension and provoke paranoia, leading one to question why they are repeated at all. Recent works by South African authors have engaged this question, including Jonny Steinberg's Midlands (2002), J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999), and Breyten Breytenbach's Dog Heart (1998). Critics have accused these works of perpetuating racism with their grim depictions of black-on-white violence but have failed to recognize the manner in which these authors contextualize the violence. I argue that each work registers the farm attack as a land claim, made in an era of failed land reform. Furthermore, these works reflexively explore the pragmatics of circulating the stories.