Canadian Fiction
Times
Monday 11 am - 12 pm
Wednesday 11 am - 1 pm
Instructor
Dr. V. Visvis
E-mail: vvisvis@chass.utoronto.ca
Office Location
JHB 802
Brief Description of Course
A study of English-Canadian fiction written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This survey course will begin with an analysis of early to mid-twentieth-century fiction, focusing on issues of sentimentalism, realism, and modernism. We will continue with an exploration of contemporary multicultural narratives within the context of postmodern experimentation and dystopian futurism. The course will close with an examination of women’s writing in the 1970s and 1980s,literary representations of historical traumas—such as the Holocaust and the Japanese-Canadian internment—and recent constructions of the Canadian wilderness.
Required Reading(s)
Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (Broadview);Sinclair Ross, As For Me and My House(NCL); Sheila Watson, The Double Hook(NCL); Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion (Vintage); Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (DCB); Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman (McClelland&Stewart); Alice Munro, Who Do You Think You Are? (Penguin); Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces (McClelland&Stewart); Joy Kogawa, Obasan (Penguin); Elizabeth Hay, Late Nights on Air (McClelland&Stewart);Gil Adamson, The Outlander (Anansi).Short stories by Austin Clarke, Dionne Brand, Rohinton Mistry, Djamila Ibrahim, and Madeleine Thien.
Novels available the University of Toronto Bookstore(214 College Street,416-640-7900). Works of short fiction by Austin Clarke, Dionne Brand, Rohinton Mistry, Djamila Ibrahim, and Madeleine Thien will be posted on the course Quercus site.
First Three Authors/Texts
Montgomery, Ross, Watson.
Method of Instruction
In-person
Method of Evaluation
- One first-term essay(20%)
- One second-term essay (30%)
- One first-term test (15%)
- One final examination (25%)
- Class participation (10%)