The Postwar Novel in Canada

Rosmarin Heidenreich

Description

As a comparative study which includes the analysis of both English-Canadian and Quebec novels, this book provides an overview of the novel as it has developed in this country since the Second World War. Focusing on narratological rather than thematic elements, the book represents a systematic application of the insights and analytical tools of reader-reception theory, in particular the models proposed by Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss. Placing the emphasis on the text and its effects rather than on the historical or psycho-sociological genesis of the text, the author invokes the models and paradigms of other literatures to establish a broader cultural context permitting the significance of a literature to emerge as a carrier of meaning in and beyond the culture that produces it. Tracing a critical path from Hugh MacLennan's hierarchic romance structures and Gabrielle Roy's social realism to the metafictions of Hubert Aquin and Timothy Findley, the author reveals that the novel's narratological features themselves are often closely linked with ideological positions.

Sujets

• Romance
• Literary criticism

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554587018
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Postwar Novel in Canada Narrative Patterns and Reader Response
Biblioth que de la Revue Canadienne de Litt rature Compar e, vol. 8 Library of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, vol. 8
DIRECTEUR/EDITOR: M. V. Dimic, Alberta
SECRÉTAIRE DE RÉDACTION/EDITORIAL SECRETARY: E. D. Blodgett, Alberta COMITÉ DE PATRONAGE/ ADVISORY BOARD COMITÉ DE RÉDACTION/ EDITORIAL COMMITTEE J. E. Bencheikh, Paris/ Alger R. Bourneuf, Laval R. K. DasGupta, Delhi P. Chavy, Dalhousie J. Ferrat , Alberta L. Dole el, Toronto N. Frye, Toronto M. Goetz-Stankiewicz, British H. G. Gadamer, Heidelberg Columbia C. Guill n, Harvard V. Graham, Toronto G. Hartman, Yale E. J. H. Greene, Alberta T. Klaniczay, Budapest E. Heier, Waterloo A. Viatte, Z rich/Paris E. Kushner, McGill P. Zumthor, Montreal P. Merivale, British Columbia T. Reiss, Montr al I. Schuster, McGill R. Sutherland, Sherbrooke M. J. Vald s, Toronto E. Vance, Montr al
1 E. J. H. Greene. Menander to Marivaux: The History of a Comic Structure. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1977. Pp. 201
2,3 M. V. Dimic and E. Kushner, with J. Ferrat and R. Struc, eds. Proceedings of the Vllth Congress of the ICLA/Actes du VII Congr s de I AILC [Montreal-Ottawa, 1973]. Budapest: Akad miai Kiad ; Stuttgart: Kunst und Wissen, 1979. Pp. 562 and 728
4 Mario J. Vald s and Owen J. Miller, eds. Interpretation of Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978. Pp. 202
5 Linda Hutcheon. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980. Pp. xii + 168
6 Nina Kolesnikoff. Bruno Jasiehski: His Evolution from Futurism to Socialist Realism . Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982. Pp. x + 148
7 Christie V. McDonald. The Dialogue of Writing: Essays in Eighteenth-Century French Literature. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1984. Pp. xviii + 109
8 Rosmarin Heidenreich. The Postwar Novel in Canada: Narrative Patterns and Reader Response. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1989. Pp. xvi + 197.
ROSMARIN HEIDENREICH Foreword by Linda Hutcheon
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Heidenreich, Rosmarin Elfriede The postwar novel in Canada
Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-88920-980-4
1. Canadian fiction - 20th century - History and criticism. I. Title.
PS8187.H44 1989 C813 .54 09 C88-095229-6 PR9192.5.H44 1989
Copyright 1989 WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5
89 90 91 92 4 3 2 1
Cover design by Vijen Vijendren
Printed in Canada
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means-graphic, electronic or mechanical-without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 379 Adelaide Street West, Suite Ml, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1S5.
For Stephanie and Philip
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Linda Hutcheon
Introduction
Part I Perspectival Structures and Norm Repertoires
ONE Social Norms and Perspectival Patterns
1. Oppositional arrangements of perspective
2. Graduated perspectives: Margaret Atwood s The Edible Woman
3. An instance of serial perspectivisation: Marie-Claire Blais s Une Saison dans la vie d Emmanuel
TWO Relationships between Social and Literary Norm Repertoires
1. First-person narration as a function of alienation: Andr Langevin s Poussi re sur la ville
2. R jean Ducharme s L Hiver de force and the decontextualization of narrative
3. Overdeterminacy as a strategy of defamiliarization: Robertson Davies s Fifth Business
Part II Aspects of Indeterminacy
THREE Segmentation and Superimposition in Leonard Cohen s Beautiful Losers
FOUR Perspectival Segmentation, Anamorphosis and Isomorphism as Indeterminate Aspects in Hubert Aquin s Trou de m moire
Part III Patterns of Allusion
FIVE Epic Allusion as a Narrative Strategy in A. M. Klein s Second Scroll
SIX Generic Parody as a Communicatory Strategy in Hubert Aquin s Prochain pisode
Afterword
Selected Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Much of the argument in this study is derived from work that I had done in connection with my doctoral thesis at the University of Toronto. For this reason I should like to express once again my thanks to Owen J. Miller, David M. Hayne and Claude T. Bissell, who guided me in that enterprise. I also extend my warmest thanks to Mario J. Vald s for the interest and encouragement with which he supported my previous work and more particularly the undertaking of writing this book. I should further like to thank Wolfgang Iser for his advice and encouragement, and also for his willingness to discuss with me various aspects of his theory as I have applied it to Canadian and Quebec writing. The responsibility for any inaccuracies in the representation of his ideas as I have applied them rests of course with me. Linda Hutcheon s work on parody proved extraordinarily helpful in my analysis of the more recent novels. To her I offer my affectionate thanks not only for writing the foreword to the present volume, but also for the many other ways in which she has supported my work. I am also indebted to Milan V. Dimi and E. D. Blodgett of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature for their helpful suggestions regarding the manuscript.
Parts of this book were written abroad, and for their logistical help in procuring articles and texts which were then unavailable to me I thank my friends Caroline Bayard, Annie Brisset and Irini Papatheo-dorou, all of whom also acted as sympathetic sounding boards as the manuscript progressed.
To Brigitte Fenez-Gr goire and Donata Thibault I express my thanks for their help in typing the manuscript, and to Madeleine Samuda for helping me track down some elusive articles. In connection with my work on this manuscript I also wish to acknowledge a grant from St. Boniface College.
Parts of some chapters of this volume have appeared in print elsewhere, and appear here with the permission of the various editors: Chapter Four is an expansion of my article entitled Aspects of Indeterminacy in Hubert Aquin s Trou de m moire, published in Gaining Ground. European Critics on Canadian Literature, Reingard M. Nischik and Robert Kroetsch, eds., Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1985. Chapter Five is a revised version of an article which appeared in Leaflets of a Surfacing Response, J rgen Martini, ed., University of Bremen Press, 1980 under the title A. M. Klein s Second Scroll and Joyce s Ulysses: some allusive relationships. Chapter Six is a revised and expanded version of the article Hubert Aquin s Prochain pisode. An exercise in the hermeneutics of reading, Revue de I Universit d Ottawa (Spring 1987).
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.
Acknowledgment is hereby made for kind permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted material:
Fifth Business, 1970, and The Manticore, 1972, by Robertson Davies, reprinted by permission of Macmillan of Canada, A Division of Canada Publishing Corporation, and Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Beautiful Losers, 1966, by Leonard Cohen, reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin Inc. and Watkins/Loomis Agency, Inc.
The Edible Woman, 1969, by Margaret Atwood, used by permission of the Canadian Publishers, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto.
The Second Scroll, 1951, by A. M. Klein, used by permission of the Canadian Publishers, McClelland and Stewart, Toronto.
L Hiver deforce, 1973, by R jean Ducharme, reprinted by permission of Editions Gallimard, Paris.
Poussi re sur le ville, 1953, by Andr Langevin, reprinted by permission of Le Cercle du Livre de France Limitee; Prochaine episode, 1965, and Trou de m moire, 1968, by Hubert Aquin, reprinted by permission of Le Cercle du Livre de France Limit e.
Un Saison dans la vie d Emmanuel, 1966, by Marie-Claire Blais, reprinted by permission of Editions Grasset, Paris, and Sogides Ltee, Montreal.
Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of all copyright material reprinted in the text. The author and publisher regret any errors, and will be pleased to make necessary corrections in subsequent editions.
Foreword
With The Postwar Novel in Canada: Narrative Patterns and Reader Response something new has appeared in Canadian criticism. To my knowledge, this is the first extended application of the insights and analytic tools of Iserian reader-response criticism to Canadian literature. That it is time for such an approach is clear from the current debates in critical theory. This study responds to a double call: first, that of the fiction itself, which is here convincingly presented as becoming increasingly aware of its own potential interpretive strategies, and second, that of the critical community, which for the last decade has been involved in a serious self-examination. Hans Robert Jauss s 1967 provocation to literary scholarship to move beyond the formalist paradigm has been echoing through the academic establishment: both Anglo-American New Criticism and French structuralism have been submitted to radical critiques. One form of that challenge has been what is generally called reader-response criticism, a focus on the role of the reading interpreter of the text and of the text s means of engaging the reader in a proce