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Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature
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Order online and receive a 25% discount $42.95 Paper, 294 pp. ISBN13: 978-1-55458-326-3 Release Date: |
Finalist for the 2011 ACQL Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism
Book Description
Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature is a study of the work of over twenty contemporary Atlantic-Canadian writers that counters the widespread impression of Atlantic Canada as a quaint and backward place. By examining their treatment of work, culture, and history, author Herb Wyile highlights how these writers resist the image of Atlantic Canadians as improvident and regressive, if charming, folk.
After an introduction that examines the current place of the region within the Canadian federation and the broader context of economic globalization, Anne of Tim Hortons explores how Atlantic-Canadian writers present a picture of the region that is much more complex and less quaint than the stereotypes through which it is typically viewed. Through the works of authors such as Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, George Elliott Clarke, Rita Joe, Frank Barry, Alistair MacLeod, and Bernice Morgan, among others, the book looks at the changing (and increasingly corporate) nature of work, the cultural diversification and subversive self-consciousness of Atlantic-Canadian literature, and Atlantic-Canadian writers’ often revisionist approach to the region’s history.
What these writers are engaged in, the book contends, is a kind of collective readjustment of the image of the region. Rather than a marginal place stranded outside of time, Atlantic Canada in these works is very much caught up in contemporary economic, political, and cultural developments, particularly the broad sweep of economic globalization.
About Herb Wyile
Herb Wyile is a professor of English at Acadia University. He is the author of Speculative Fictions: Contemporary Canadian Novelists and the Writing of History (2002) and Speaking in the Past Tense: Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical Fiction (WLU Press, 2007). He co-edited, with Jeanette Lynes, Surf’s Up! The Rising Tide of Atlantic-Canadian Literature (2008) and created the website Waterfront Views: Contemporary Writing of Atlantic Canada.
Reviews
“Anyone interested in Canadian literature or Atlantic Canadian culture will welcome this excellent overview of the re-imagining of Atlantic Canada. Indeed, given its engagement with political economy and especially of region, I can imagine many geographers (of whatever region) and political theorists (of whatever sphere) finding interest in its careful articulation of literature and non-literary theory. No decent university library will be without it; anyone remotely in the field should own it.”
— Daniel Samson, Brock University, author of The Spirit of Industry and Improvement: Liberal Government and Rural-Industrial Society, Nova Scotia, 1790–1862 (2008)
“In Anne of Tim Hortons Herb Wyile makes a compelling and sometimes provocative argument about the effects of globalization on Atlantic-Canadian literature, for despite its economic and political problems, Atlantic Canada is a remarkably vital area of literary activity, with many prize-winning novels and internationally respected authors. Regionalism is at its best in Wyile’s book, which should be read by anyone interested in Canadian literature.”
— Tracy Ware, Queen’s University
Related interest
By the same author
Speaking in the Past Tense: Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical Fiction, Herb Wyile
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