published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

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This thesis is a study of the treatment of mental disability in Canadian literature. Literature reflects the perceptions and practises of the culture of which it is a part. Radical changes have been made in recent years in the thinking about persons with mental handicaps. The issue of whether the changes are reflected in literature prompted the writing of this thesis. Little is known about characters labelled as mentally disabled in non-didactic, Canadian Literature. They are not commonly discussed in the academic journals of Canadian Literature and Education. The purpose of this thesis was to get to know ten of the above characters. The following questions were drawn from issues in the academic literature regarding mental disability. All seven questions were applied to each character in turn. (1) Label? (2) Personal relationships? (3) Thoughts and feelings? (4) Choices? (5) Daily activity? (6) Relationship with service providers? (7) Personal assets and abilities? Short story characters: Benny Parry, "The Time of Death," Munro, 1968; Dolores Boyle, "Dance of the Happy Shades," Munro, 1968; Kelvin, "Circle of Prayer," Munro, 1986; Neddy Baker, "Hello Cheeverland, Goodbye," Findley, 1984; Stella Bragg, "Bragg and Minna," Findley, 1988. Characters from novels: Francis Cornish, "What's Bred in the Bone," Davies, 1985; John-Gustav Skandl, "What the Crow Said," Kroetsch, 1978; Lotte, "Not Wanted on the Voyage," Findley, 1984; Rowena Ross, "The Wars," Findley, 1977; Tehmul Lungraa, "Such a Long Journey," Mistry, 1991. Findings indicated that Canadian literature is not yet reflecting the new movement to develop full personhood. Most characters were limited in the choices they made. A variety of labels were used. Little was said about what the characters think or feel. No characters were married, had children, or a job. Most of the characters had a personal relationship with another character.

This dissertation argues that, since at least the 1960s, there has been a distinguished tradition of Canadian poets who have turned to the novel as a result of their dissatisfaction with the limitations of the lyric and instead have built the lyric into a mode of narrative that contrasts sharply with the descriptive conventions of plot-driven novels. Citing the affinity between the lyric sequence and the visual series, the introduction maintains that the treatment of narrative as a series of frames, as well as the self-conscious dismantling of these framing devices, is a topos in Canadian literature. The term "(un)framing" expresses this double movement. The thesis asserts that Michael Ondaatje, George Bowering, Joy Kogawa, Daphne Marlatt, and Anne Carson (un)frame their novels according to formal precedents established in their long poems. Chapter 2 illustrates the relation of the visual series to the song cycle in Ondaatje's long poems the man with seven toes (1969) and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), as well as his first novel Coming Through Slaughter (1976). Chapter 3 traces the development of the "serial novel" from Bowering's early serial poems to his trilogy, Autobiology (1972), Curious (1973) , and A Short Sad Book (1977). Chapter 4 argues that Joy Kogawa structures her novel Ohasan (1981) on the concentric narrative model established in her long poem "Dear Euclid" (1974) . Chapter 5 shows how Daphne Marlatt performs a series of variations on the quest narrative that she finds in Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen (1844), and thereby develops a lesbian quest narrative in her long poem Frames of a Story (1968), her novella Zocalo (1977), and her novel Ana Historic (1988). Chapter 6 explores the combination of lyric, essay, and interview in Carson's long poem "Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings" (1995) and argues that the long poem forms the basis of her novel in verse, Autobiography of Red (1998). The final chapter assesses some of the strengths and limitations of lyrical fiction and concludes that a thorough grasp of the contemporary long poem is essential to an understanding of the development of the novel in Canada.

There are two parts to this thesis: a novel, Closing the Circle, and a critical commentary on the process of writing a novel from beginning to end. The novel tells the story of Natasha, a young, late twentieth century woman who searches for her "roots." It begins in southern Alberta and she eventually travels to Eastern Europe where she uncovers the voices in her dreams and from the past. It deals with the metaphysical question of a collective unconscious that houses past symbols pertinent to her search as well as the question as to the validity of dreams and memory in human life. The critical commentary addresses issues involved in writing a fiction vis a vis structure and other literary devices. It also addresses questions that come with taking personal familial historical events and writing them into "story." / 28 cm.

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Since 1960, the first-person narrative form has dominated the Quebec novel. As first-person novels often imitate non-fiction forms (autobiographies, diaries, etc.), it follows that this narrative choice would involve a certain degree of self-revelation. We will see though that this is not the case in the "nouveau roman" of Quebec. In fact, the Quebec narrator employs a number of techniques to distance him or herself from the "I" that is the object of the narrative. / In this work, we will attempt to identify some of the main characteristics of this new face of the Quebec novel. We will start with an exploration of two novels from the pre-1960 period: Maria Chapdelaine and Poussiere sur la ville. We will then study the contemporary era through our choice of four of Quebec's most famous novels: Le Libraire, Prochain episode, Kamouraska and L'Hiver de force. We will see that the "nouveau roman" is not as "personal" as its form suggests and that the distance between the narrator and his or her "self" is not only a constant but is also an evolving characteristic of the Quebec novel. / This work is therefore a study of the contemporary Quebec novel and its narrative properties, and of the distance that the narrator imposes between his or her present and past self.