Books – Literary Criticism
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Writing Grief
Margaret Laurence and the Work of Mourning
Margaret Laurence’s much admired Manawaka fiction — The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The Diviners -– has achieved remarkable recognition for its compassionate portrayal of the attempt to find meaning and peace in ordinary life. In Writing Grief, Christian Riegel argues that the protagonists in these books achieve resolution through acts of mourning, placing this fiction within the larger tradition of writing that explores the nuances and strategies of mourning.
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Toward Defining the Prairies
Region, Culture, and History
New ways of thinking about literature and history have radically changed how we think about or even “define” a region like the Prairie West. Toward Defining the Prairies highlights recent approaches to thinking about the Prairie West. Bounded by pieces from well-known historian Gerald Friesen and Governor-General’s Award-winning writer Robert Kroetsch, these 13 essays are as diverse as the region itself.
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Making it Home
Place in Canadian Literature
Redefines our understanding of place, home, and the relationship between them.
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Wild Mother Dancing
Maternal Narrative in Canadian Literature
Wild Mother Dancing challenges the historical absence of the mother, who, as subject and character, has been repeatedly suppressed and edited out of the literary canon. In her search for sources for telling the new (or old, forbidden story) against a tradition of narrative absence, Brandt turns to Canadian fiction representing a varety of cultural traditions — Margaret Laurence, Daphne Marlatt, Jovette Marchessault, Joy Kogawa, Sky Lee — and a collection of oral interviews about childbirth told by Mennonite women.
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