"Occupants of Memory: War in Twentieth-Century Canadian Fiction" examines key novels and short stories about wartime and post-war experience spanning nine decades. Beginning with Sara Jeannette Duncan's The Imperialist (1904) and ending with Timothy Findley's "Stones" (1988), this dissertation juxtaposes works by such well-known Canadian authors as Ralph Connor, Hugh MacLennan, and L.M. Montgomery with lesser-known but important works by William Allister, Charles Yale Harrison, Edward McCourt, and Colin McDougall. Unlike previous studies of Canadian war literature, most of which focus on an individual author, a single war, or a particular theme, this dissertation argues that war fiction is a tradition in which authors influence, reflect, and counter one another throughout the century. Discourses of social memory and nationalism/anti-nationalism provide a theoretical basis for discussion, and descriptions of major events from the South African War, through the two world wars, to the Cold War form an historical context for authors and their works. References to European and American war literature and its critics show Canadian works to be comparable to, yet different from, their international counterparts. Particularly notable is the way in which Canadian works emphasize a dichotomy between romance and realism, rarely broaching the high modernism that is the hallmark of many international works. Occupants of Memory lays the groundwork for a broad critical discourse of Canadian war literature and its related subjects.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/29495 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Webb, Peter |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 256 p. |
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