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The photograph is of interest to the writer because it is uniquely a product both of the realm of objective, physical reality and of the realm of artifice. Its ambiguous status as the physical emanation of a past referent endows it with an uneasy authority. It appears to offer assurances of identity and clarity; at the same time, it undermines the attempt to control experience by demonstrating that to freeze time and space is to render them obsolete. Thus the photograph can be seen as a metaphor for the life-giving and death-dealing enterprise of writing fictions. Moreover, because the photograph is a reflection of the past, private or public, a comparison of the use made of photographic images in the fictions of two different cultures, one older, one newer, may reveal differences in aesthetic between those two cultures. A theoretical dialectic for exploring the use made of the photograph in contemporary British and Canadian fiction can be constructed by comparing the thesis of Susan Sontag's On Photography (1977) with that of Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida (1980). Sontag is concerned with the camera as an instrument of power which victimizes its subjects; she sees the text as necessary to contextualize the image according to its function in time. Barthes understands the photograph's fragmentariness as potentially revelatory, and text as parasitic upon image. Where the Sontagian model emphasizes narrative contextualization and the photographer/writer as wielder of power, the Barthean model emphasizes a vertical hermeneutic of epiphanies and the spectator/reader as creator of meaning. A look at several contemporary British novelists who use photographic imagery (Julian Barnes, Graham Swift, Martin Amis, Fay Weldon, Penelope Lively, Anita Brookner, Timothy Mo, Salman Rushdie) suggests that these writers tend towards an ironical distancing of the photography, which is seen as parodic of traditional mimesis. Such novelists thus ascribe to and yet undermine Sontag's concern with narrative control. A number of contemporary Canadian writers (for instance, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence, Timothy Findley, Norman Levine, Diane Schoemperlen, Janette Turner Hospital, Michael Ondaatje) find within the photograph a representational magic that transcends boundaries of spatial and temporal logic. They share Barthes' belief in the intransigent value of appearances. An examination of these different writers' use of the photographic image thus provides a commentary upon their various understandings of the real, the fictive, and the relationship between the two.

Une analyse de l'illustration du roman par les peintures de Clarence Gagnon qui font partie de l'édition Mornay de Maria Chapdelaine manifeste que ces peintures ne doivent pas être considérées péremptoirement comme un surplus décoratif. Elles illustrent le texte en un processus beaucoup plus complexe et significatif qu'une superficielle décoration qui se contenterait d'orner agréablement la présentation matérielle du roman. Nous avons donc voulu montrer qu'on peut lire ensemble le roman et les peintures, en les considérant comme des égaux, articulés l'un à l'autre en des relations sémantiques complexes. Ce sont les caractéristiques particulières de cette lecture que nous avons décrites, tel qu'elles se présentent, au fil des 54 peintures et de l'emblème inscrit à l'intérieur du roman. L'illustration du roman nous est apparue alors comme un processus d'explicitation, de concrétisation et de clarification qui produit la version élargie du roman qu'est le roman illustré. Pour bien comprendre l'illustration du roman, il nous est apparu nécessaire d'analyser en premier lieu le roman non illustre. Cette analyse nous a permis de mieux comprendre les significations des passages illustres par les peintures et, par conséquent, de juger plus efficacement les significations des actions illustratives. Seule une analyse préalable du roman permet en effet de reconnaitre, dans plusieurs peintures de l'édition Mornay, des illustrations du schème structural qui régit la construction des personnages. La solidarité sémantique qui réunit texte illustre et peinture illustrant nous a permis de définir l'illustration comme un procédé de signification bidirectionnel dans lequel les peintures sont a leur tour illustrée par le texte qu'elles éclaircissent. L'analyse du roman non illustre nous a également permis d'identifier plus clairement les passages non illustrés par les peintures et de comprendre une des caractéristiques générales de son illustration : l’occultation. Sans prétendre définir les règles de fonctionnement du roman illustré en tant que sous-genre romanesque ni de fixer les modalités de fonctionnement du procédé illustratif en soi, nous avons inscrit, entre l'analyse du roman non illustré et nos analyses de l'illustration du roman par les peintures, une brève réflexion dans laquelle nous avons essayé de définir les caractéristiques générales de l'illustration en tant que procédé de signification. Les images illustrantes peuvent éclaircir un roman parce qu'elles sont réalisées dans un langage différent de celui de l'énoncé auquel elles sont articulées. Ainsi, les peintures illustrantes sont toujours visuellement et spatialement plus concrètes et plus explicites que le texte auquel elles sont similaires, parce qu'elles agencent leur énoncé en se servant de formes et de couleurs, donnés immédiatement à voir, alors que le texte ne se donne que comme un potentiel plus ou moins précis et complexe de visualisations. Cependant, l'effet d'illustration résulte tout autant des similarités générales entre peinture et littérature. L'illustration d'un roman peut donc être considérée comme l'ensemble des significations nouvelles proposées par les images inscrites dans un texte. Les significations proposées par l'illustration du roman, articulets à celles énoncées par le roman sans images, produiserit donc le roman illustré, ce texte mixte qui est une version élargie du roman non illustré. Comme une peinture ou un texte non illustré, le roman illustré se veut, idéalement, une totalité : il se présente comme un objet unique et individuel qui se caractérise par la cohérence interne. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The elaboration in recent cultural and art historical texts of Northrop Frye's assessment of Canadian literature (as articulated in his "Conclusion" to A Literary History of Canada and elsewhere) demonstrates that such concepts as "garrison mentality" and "where is here?" persist in the discourse of English-Canadian cultural studies. One result is the insistence upon regarding representations of land in early twentieth-century artistic endeavours as the manifestation of a colonial response and refusal to accommodate place. Another result is the perception that artists of the early twentieth century were attached to the imperial centre, situated outside the borders of the country, "over there." The work of Ralph Connor, Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, and Emily Carr demonstrates that Frye's and other critical assessments have been too prescriptive: even if these artists employed some European or Old World conventions, they insisted upon Canada's difference from the imperial centre and were proud of that difference. A re-examination of their work demonstrates how they employed land in the construction of national-identity and believed it to be a benevolent rather than hostile force, a source of a spiritual and transcendent experience that resulted in the conversion to Canadian-ness.

This thesis addresses the concerns of both historiographic theorists who are skeptical of the power of narrative to present historical information reliably, and of literary critics who are suspicious of any text that lays claim to factual or truthful representation. Through the analysis of texts that blend the self-referential uncertainty of modern (or postmodern) literature with the utilitarian objectives of historiography---works of literature that strive to represent, faithfully, events from history---the thesis assesses the relative truth value of the historical project and evaluates the role of narrative in effectively imparting historical information. I begin with an overview of the theoretical debate over the form of historical writing and the source of historical knowledge, since classical times, followed by an analysis of primary texts in the context of current trends in literary and historiographic theory. These texts, which pertain to the history of Japanese-Canadians since the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, include Joy Kogawa's novels Obasan and Itsuka, and Dorothy Livesay's documentary poem for radio entitled Call My People Home. In addition I provide an analysis of a historiographic text, Mutual Hostages, that contradicts the prevailing perception of this historical event. As revisionary history, this text provides the opportunity to examine a competing narrative and its mechanism for establishing and communicating historical information. Through the analysis of these works, this thesis demonstrates that narrative is appropriate to historiography, and that figurative speech---as in poetic and rhetorical devices---can be more effective than literalist speech in representing historical events.

Abstract Not Available.

This thesis focuses on major twentieth-century native Newfoundland novelists whose legacies comprise a variety of voices and narrative strategies that circumvent or confront perceived cultural and literary authority. These novelists include, in chapter one, Anastasia English (1862-1959) and Margaret Duley (1894-1968); in chapter two, Harold Horwood (1923) and Percy Janes (1922); in chapter three, M. T. Dohaney (1930) and William Gough (1945); and in chapter four, Gordon Pinsent (1930), William Rowe (1942) and Wayne Johnson (1958). English and Duley are both centrally concerned with women's roles in their societies and in expressing their awakening feminism they develop subtexts of imagery and metaphores which align them with nineteenth-century British women writers. Harold Horwood's frequent disparagement of Newfoundlanders is matched by Percy Jane's depiction of their often self-inflicted violences, yet Horwood pontificates solutions and isolates himself from the people of the island whereas Janes acknowledges his need for their companionship and the necessity of collective change. Dohaney and Gough both emphasize the importance of memory in their characterizations of the Newfoundlander's psyche. They suggest that memory functions to overcome both the geography of Newfoundland, which dispassionately destroys its inhabitants' creative work, and the history of Newfoundland which is determined in large parts by events and interpretations of those events occurring beyond the Newfoundlander's control. Pinsent, Rowe and Johnson use humourous texts to convey the anguish Newfoundlanders feel regarding religious, political and industrial powers imposed by foreign cultures over them. Their texts demonstrate the wide-spread use of self-mockery by Newfoundlanders, which diminishes self-esteem and self-reliance in the province. All of the novelists assembled in this study indicate that the construction of stories may establish a personal mythology and power enabling the architect to survive geographic, cultural and personal domination.

Since Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, and Alice Munro do not frequently employ experimental or overtly metafictional forms, they are often read as realist writers in contradistinction to postmodernists. In fact, the assumptions upon which their work rests have little in common with the assumptions underlying realism, and they are as resoundingly post-realist as their postmodern counterparts. One of the key characteristics of realism is an assumption that language can be a neutral, transparent medium in which life can be rendered without distortion. Yet in the work of Atwood, Munro, and Gallant language is never transparent. Language creates reality, and this creation is always connected to power. The three writers share anxieties about the paradoxical nature of women's relationship to language: women must use language in order to assert their existence in the world, yet language exerts disturbing control, especially over women. This control is insistently depicted as a form of violence. Realism, to use Bakhtin's terms, is essentially monologic--its narrative strategy depends on a single unifying view, which the reader is encouraged to share. These writers, by contrast, parody the monologic view offered by society's master narratives--often depicted as largely male discourses--and expose it as absurdly limited. They explore the heteroglossia of the contemporary world and insistently expose the ways in which discourses exert power, especially over women. Many of their texts are mis-read as closed realist texts when in fact they remain unresolved and dialogic. Realism encourages a view of character as coherent and unitary, capable of undergoing development and reaching maturity. These writers depict the female self as lacking coherence. Often the boundaries between self and others, especially other women, are confused. Emphasis is placed on the importance of how the self is constructed in the eyes of others rather than on any sense of internal development. For these writers the female self is not a stable entity but a construction. Atwood, Gallant, and Munro do not construct fictions that attempt to mirror life--they recognize the power of voice to construct the world. They are therefore not the naive or conservative "realists" they are sometimes read as. In fact, their work, like that of the postmodernists, challenges and deconstructs the assumptions of realism. However, whereas language for the postmodernists has become little more than a play of empty signifiers, for these women writers it is still vitally allied to power.

Abstract Not Available.