This thesis addresses four Canadian immigrant English-language prose writers in order to identify commonalities and differences in their literary representations of the immigrant experience over time. While origin and ethnicity factored in the selection of writers so as to ensure diversity, the primary selection criterion was to obtain a significant historical range, from the 1830s to the present. The writers selected are: Susanna Moodie, an immigrant from England in the mid-19th century; John Marlyn, an immigrant from Hungary in the early-20th century; Michael Ondaatje, an immigrant from Sri Lanka via England in the mid-20th century; and Rawi Hage, an immigrant from Lebanon via the US in the late-20th century. I conclude that there are significant similarities among the works of all four writers, generally attributable to their shared experience of being immigrants, and equally significant areas of divergence, generally attributable to the development of Canada, with Moodie and Marlyn on one side of an important watershed in the mid-1950s, and Ondaatje and Hage on the other. All four write extensively of the experience of the immigrant with a fundamental similarity in their depiction of isolation, non-belonging and dislocation. Over time, the representations of isolation have become more complex, mirroring the increasing diversity and complexity of Canadian society. The mid-1950s shift in Canadian immigration policy from preferred British, US, and Northern European immigration to multinational immigration has resulted in increased diversity of both the Canadian immigrant population and Canadian literature. While the environment of the immigrant to Canada changes, one constant has been and is likely to continue to be a sense of dislocation, non-belonging and isolation, of being an uninvited outsider, or survenant. Canadian literature has reflected this reality consistently for almost 200 years and will no doubt continue to do so.

This thesis addresses four Canadian immigrant English-language prose writers in order to identify commonalities and differences in their literary representations of the immigrant experience over time. While origin and ethnicity factored in the selection of writers so as to ensure diversity, the primary selection criterion was to obtain a significant historical range, from the 1830s to the present. The writers selected are: Susanna Moodie, an immigrant from England in the mid-19th century; John Marlyn, an immigrant from Hungary in the early-20th century; Michael Ondaatje, an immigrant from Sri Lanka via England in the mid-20th century; and Rawi Hage, an immigrant from Lebanon via the US in the late-20th century. I conclude that there are significant similarities among the works of all four writers, generally attributable to their shared experience of being immigrants, and equally significant areas of divergence, generally attributable to the development of Canada, with Moodie and Marlyn on one side of an important watershed in the mid-1950s, and Ondaatje and Hage on the other. All four write extensively of the experience of the immigrant with a fundamental similarity in their depiction of isolation, non-belonging and dislocation. Over time, the representations of isolation have become more complex, mirroring the increasing diversity and complexity of Canadian society. The mid-1950s shift in Canadian immigration policy from preferred British, US, and Northern European immigration to multinational immigration has resulted in increased diversity of both the Canadian immigrant population and Canadian literature. While the environment of the immigrant to Canada changes, one constant has been and is likely to continue to be a sense of dislocation, non-belonging and isolation, of being an uninvited outsider, or survenant. Canadian literature has reflected this reality consistently for almost 200 years and will no doubt continue to do so.

Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 29 juin 2023) / Ce mémoire de maîtrise porte sur l'interaction des langages littéraires et visuels dans le contexte du livre d'artiste. Il examine l'effet de la présentation d'un texte de non-fiction sous forme de livre d'artiste afin de déterminer si l'expérience de lecture résultante représente mieux la singularité d'une expérience humaine précise. Le ventre des galets constitue la première partie du mémoire. Il s'agit d'un récit de non-fiction portant sur un voyage en Irlande et sur le deuil d'un parent, le tout présenté sous forme de livre d'artiste. Le texte en fragments est séparé en carnets et entrecroisé de reproductions d'aquarelles réalisées au fil de l'écriture. Le récit imprimé et relié est contenu dans un boîtier réalisé à la main et l'objet est essentiel à l'expérience de lecture. La deuxième partie du mémoire, à travers l'analyse du livre d'artiste de Margaret Atwood et Charles Pachter The Illustrated Journals of Susanna Moodie, étudie le rapport entre le texte et l'image et l'effet émergeant du mélange des deux. L'analyse est précédée d'une démarche de clarification de deux domaines - l'écriture du réel et le livre d'artiste - afin de comprendre les caractéristiques clés de chaque discipline. La troisième partie de ce mémoire est un retour sur la démarche créative : l'écriture, la réécriture, la construction et la reconstruction du récit et du livre objet. Elle examine également les défis connexes à l'écriture du réel, plus précisément à l'écriture du deuil. / This master's thesis explores the interaction of literary and visual languages within artist's books. It examines the impact of presenting a nonfiction text as an artist's book in order to determine if the reading experience evokes more effectively the singularity of a specific human experience. Le ventre des galets is the first part of this master's thesis. It is a nonfiction narrative about a trip to Ireland and about the grieving process for a parent. Presented in fragments, the text is intertwined with a visual narrative consisting of reproductions of watercolour paintings realized during the writing of the narrative. The book is printed and bound and is contained in a handmade case; the object is essential to the reading experience. The second part of the thesis is an analysis of the artist's book by Margaret Atwood and Charles Pachter, The Illustrated Journals of Susanna Moodie, focusing on the relationship between words and images and the effect that the combination creates. The analysis is preceded by a survey of two fields - nonfiction writing and the artist's book - to clarify each field and better understand the key characteristics of each. The third part of this thesis is an observation of my own creative process: writing, rewriting, constructing, and reconstructing of the nonfiction narrative and the book as an object. This section also touches on the challenges associated with the writing of nonfiction, specifically as it relates to revisiting and writing about grief.

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.

<p>It might be time for critics of early Canadian literature to avoid avoiding blackness in early Canada in their work. This dissertation<em> </em>takes up the recurrent pattern of displacement that emerges in critical studies that recall or rediscover early Canada. It attends in particular to the displacements and subordinations of Canadian blackness, particularly those conspicuously avoided by critics or rendered conspicuously absent by authors in the literatures of Upper Canada during the height of the Underground Railroad era, between 1830 and 1860. Not only is blackness in Upper Canada concealed, omitted, derided, and caricatured, but these representational formulas shape the hegemonic common-sense of what Antonio Gramsci terms “the national popular.” I argue that canonical texts contain accounts of early Canadian blackness from the national popular and subsequent criticisms of them produce an attitude and a history that excises blackness when literary and cultural critics examine the complexities of early Canada. Informed by Stuart Hall’s concept of the “floating signifier,” I draw the tropes of blackness out from behind the backdrop of early Canadian texts and into the foreground of Canadian literary and cultural criticism as well as critical race studies; in turn, this theoretical model helps me to explain what cultural work “undefined and indefinable” blackness did in early Canada and in contemporary imaginings of it (Clarke <em>Odysseys</em>, 16). Working out this paradox in John Richardson’s <em>Wacousta </em>and <em>The Canadian Brothers</em>, Susanna Moodie’s <em>Roughing It in the Bush</em>, and Catharine Parr Traill’s <em>The Canadian Settlers Guide</em>, my three chapters examine how these Upper Canadian authors display as much as hide the crucial roles of blackness in the formation of Canada and Canadian national identity.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)