Focusing on the texts of James Cook, Samuel Hearne, Alexander Mackenzie, Archibald Menzies, David Thompson, and George Vancouver, Mapping the Nation: Exploration and the English-Canadian Literary Imagination argues that exploration writing is a subgenre of travel writing defined by its empirical perspective and function. Incorporated into the English-Canadian literary canon while being disparaged for its lack of literary qualities, exploration writing is used by English-Canadian literary histories, encyclopaedias, and companions to prove an environmentally deterministic developmental thesis of the national literature. The developmental thesis permeates anthologies that offer excerpts of exploration writing and discussions that pertain to the influence of exploration writing on later English-Canadian literature that returns to it. Returning to exploration writing addressing land exploration are Farley Mowat’s People of the Deer (1952), John Newlove’s “The Pride” (1965) and “Samuel Hearne in Wintertime” (1966), Don Gutteridge’s The Quest for North: Coppermine (1973), Marion R. Smith’s Koo-Koo-Sint: David Thompson in Western Canada (1976), and Brian Fawcett’s “The Secret Journal of Alexander Mackenzie” (1985). Returning to exploration writing addressing oceanic exploration are Earle Birney’s “Pacific Door” (1947), Damnation of Vancouver (1952), and “Captain Cook” (1961); P. K. Page’s “Cook’s Mountains” (1967); George Bowering’s George, Vancouver: A Discovery Poem (1970); Gutteridge’s Borderlands (1975), and George Bowering’s Burning Water (1980), Audrey Thomas’s “The Man with the Clam Eyes” (1982) and Intertidal Life (1984). Each text represents an individual interpretation of exploration writing that operates through genre and forms of return such as allusion, imitation, paraphrase, and quotation. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2009-03-10 13:39:01.062

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Manitoba, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Manitoba, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis project involves the translation of a selection of short stories by Camille Deslauriers, a Québécois writer, from French into English, as well as the translation of a selection of short stories by Angie Abdou, a Western English-Canadian writer, from English into French. The thesis is divided into four chapters into which the translations have been inserted. The chapters provide an introduction and commentary to the translations. I begin by giving a brief overview of the importance of literary translation in Canada as well as a short description of Québécois and English-Canadian short fiction.This section introduces the two authors that have been chosen for this thesis, Camille Deslauriers and Angie Abdou, as well as their collections of short stories, Femme-Boa and Anything Boys Can Do respectively. I discuss various approaches to translation, literary translation, linguistic issues, the translation process, and the issue of mother tongue and directionality. Following the two introductory chapters are the translations. I have translated nine of Camille Deslauriers' short stories from Femme-Boa from French into English, and three of Angie Abdou's short stories from Anything Boys Can Do from English into French. In both cases, these are the first translations to be done of these authors' works. I then go on to describe certain challenges posed by the translations, giving examples of strategies adopted to resolve the problems. In the final chapter, I reflect upon the translation process as a whole, in light of the revisions done by both of my thesis advisors, in terms of vocabulary, syntax, bilingualism, and biculturalism.This reflection enables me to synthesize the knowledge that I acquired through the whole translation experience.

<p>The decade of the nineteen-twenties has generally been recognized as a dynamic period in English-Canadian literature, but so far as fiction is concerned its achievement is widely assumed to be the introduction of social realism into the Canadian novel. Those novels which employ other than realistic conventions have been assumed by many critics to be inferior because of their non-realistic aspects. </p> <p>This dissertation examines four such novels, supposedly flawed by melodramatic excess~ Raymond Knister's White Narcissus (1929), Martha Ostenso's Wild Geese (1925), Morley Callaghan's A Broken Journey (1932), and Frederick Philip Grove's The Yoke of Life (1930) - in order to discover the function and significance of melodramatic conventions and the sort of vision they project.</p> <p>The first part of the dissertation defines such terms as "realism" and ''melodrama." and explains the critical approach to be used. In the central four chapters, this critical approach is applied to each novel in turn.</p> <p>When the novels are compared, following the detailed analysis of each, significant similarities emerge. In thematic terms, a quest is undertaken, in each case, which is meaningful on several levels: on the literal level there is an arduous physical journey across or into a specific (and generally threatening) landscape; on a symbolic level there is a journey of mythological and/or religious import; in psychological terms the journey is into the less rational aspects of human experience in an attempt to re-integrate a personality divided against itself. In terms of structure, as well, certain patterns emerge: each novel employs a balanced, rather symmetrical structure, formal devices which tend to distance the reader from the material, and vortex-like patterns of movement on the part of the protagonist.</p> <p>The formal and thematic patterns which emerge from a comparison of the four novels, then, suggest that there is a "melodramatic mode" common to them, and possibly to novels of periods other than the one explored in this thesis. Indeed, it is further argued, melodramatic conventions (which are related to the gothic mode and romanticism in general) may serve as an appropriate vehicle for the expression in fiction of a profound modern theme, the portrayal of alienated man in a secularized and relativistic universe.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Simon Fraser University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references.

The dissertation investigates the correlations among the development of general anthologies of Canadian literature, the Canadian canon, and visions of national identity. While literature anthologies are widely used in university classrooms, the influential role of the anthology in the critical study of literature has been largely overlooked, particularly in Canada. The dissertation begins with an analysis of the stages of development of general anthologies of Canadian literature, demonstrating that there are important links between dominant critical trends and the guiding interests of the various phases of anthology development and that anthologies both reflect and participate in moulding views of the nation and its literature. Focusing then upon five eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canadian authors, the dissertation traces their treatment in anthologies and analyzes in detail the impact of stages of anthology development upon authors’ inclusion and presentation. The reception of Frances Brooke, John Richardson, William Kirby, Susanna Moodie, and Emily Pauline Johnson over a span of nearly 90 years is examined, and points of inclusion and exclusion are scrutinized to determine links with prevailing critical interests as well as canonical status. These case studies reveal the functions of anthologies, which include recovering overlooked authors, amending past oversights, reflecting new areas of critical inquiry, and preserving the national literary tradition. Their treatment also reveals the effect of larger critical concerns, such as alignment with dominant visions of the nation, considerations of genre, and reassessments of past views. The dissertation shows that the anthology is a carefully constructed, culturally valuable work that plays an important role in literary criticism and canon formation and is a genre worthy of careful scrutiny.

The dissertation investigates the correlations among the development of general anthologies of Canadian literature, the Canadian canon, and visions of national identity. While literature anthologies are widely used in university classrooms, the influential role of the anthology in the critical study of literature has been largely overlooked, particularly in Canada. The dissertation begins with an analysis of the stages of development of general anthologies of Canadian literature, demonstrating that there are important links between dominant critical trends and the guiding interests of the various phases of anthology development and that anthologies both reflect and participate in moulding views of the nation and its literature. Focusing then upon five eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canadian authors, the dissertation traces their treatment in anthologies and analyzes in detail the impact of stages of anthology development upon authors’ inclusion and presentation. The reception of Frances Brooke, John Richardson, William Kirby, Susanna Moodie, and Emily Pauline Johnson over a span of nearly 90 years is examined, and points of inclusion and exclusion are scrutinized to determine links with prevailing critical interests as well as canonical status. These case studies reveal the functions of anthologies, which include recovering overlooked authors, amending past oversights, reflecting new areas of critical inquiry, and preserving the national literary tradition. Their treatment also reveals the effect of larger critical concerns, such as alignment with dominant visions of the nation, considerations of genre, and reassessments of past views. The dissertation shows that the anthology is a carefully constructed, culturally valuable work that plays an important role in literary criticism and canon formation and is a genre worthy of careful scrutiny.

The dissertation investigates the correlations among the development of general anthologies of Canadian literature, the Canadian canon, and visions of national identity. While literature anthologies are widely used in university classrooms, the influential role of the anthology in the critical study of literature has been largely overlooked, particularly in Canada. The dissertation begins with an analysis of the stages of development of general anthologies of Canadian literature, demonstrating that there are important links between dominant critical trends and the guiding interests of the various phases of anthology development and that anthologies both reflect and participate in moulding views of the nation and its literature. Focusing then upon five eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Canadian authors, the dissertation traces their treatment in anthologies and analyzes in detail the impact of stages of anthology development upon authors’ inclusion and presentation. The reception of Frances Brooke, John Richardson, William Kirby, Susanna Moodie, and Emily Pauline Johnson over a span of nearly 90 years is examined, and points of inclusion and exclusion are scrutinized to determine links with prevailing critical interests as well as canonical status. These case studies reveal the functions of anthologies, which include recovering overlooked authors, amending past oversights, reflecting new areas of critical inquiry, and preserving the national literary tradition. Their treatment also reveals the effect of larger critical concerns, such as alignment with dominant visions of the nation, considerations of genre, and reassessments of past views. The dissertation shows that the anthology is a carefully constructed, culturally valuable work that plays an important role in literary criticism and canon formation and is a genre worthy of careful scrutiny.