Paul D. Morris
Université de Saint-Boniface
Anglophone Canadian Literature and the Representation of Francophone Canada
SS 2014
Canada is famously a country comprised of two founding cultures: French and English. The dual nature of Canada’s national patrimony has been the source of undoubted cultural enrichment, but also of socio-political tension. Canada’s national identity has been profoundly influenced by the presence of two linguistic and cultural heritages. Indeed, the evolving conceptions of national identity that have marked Canada’s national development have derived from alterations in the changing state of mutual perceptions by the two cultures. For each founding culture, the national identity is intimately related to understanding of the character and role of the other.
This Hauptseminar proposes to provide an historical survey of changing perceptions of Francophone Canada through an analysis of the representation of Canada’s Francophone community in English Canadian literature. The course will begin in the colonial age and conclude in the present time. This survey of influential texts will provide the opportunity, not only to examine the core subject at hand, but also to investigate the changing state of relations between French and English in Canada, to review the evolution of the Canadian literary institution and perhaps even to hazard hypotheses concerning the likely course of relations between Canada’s Francophone and Anglophone communities.
The course will be arranged as a block seminar presented over the course of a month beginning in the first week of June 2014 (tentative schedule).
Reading Requirements:
Brooke, Frances The History of Emily Montague, 1769 (excerpts provided by instructor).
Leprohon, Rosanna Antoinette de Mirecourt or Secret Marrying and Secret Sorrowing, 1864.
MacLennan, Hugh Two Solitudes, 1945.
Cohen, Leonard Beautiful Losers, 1966.
Glover, Douglas Elle 2003.
Selections of poetry to be made available by the instructor.
N.B. Course Requirements: Presentation on a text/topic of the student’s choice
Final essay of approximately 15 pp. |