National Plots

Andrea Cabajsky is an assistant professor at the Université de Moncton, where she teaches and does research in comparative literature, especially English- and French-Canadian Studies. She has published widely on the literary history of nationalism in romantic and Victorian Canadian and British literatures and is currently developing the curriculum for an approved new master's program in comparative Canadian literature at the Université de Moncton. Brett Josef Grubisic is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia and specializes in contemporary Canadian and UK fiction. His publications include Contra/diction (ed.), Carnal Nation (co-edited with Carellin Brooks), the City of Vancouver Book Award finalist The Age of Cities, and Understanding Beryl Bainbridge.

``Theoretically informed with great interpretative sensitivity, [the contributors to this volume] illustrate how Canadian historical fiction often reveals a tension between skepticism or even relativism on the one hand, and a yearning for continuity and an identification with place on the other.... The forms of Canadian historical fiction, and the ideological questions pursued by the genre are succinctly discussed in an introduction by the editors.... Due attention is paid to the meta-narrative element that is a hallmark of recent historical fiction in Canada (indeed, it seems appropriate that the term 'historiographic metafiction' was coined by a Canadian critic, Linda Hutcheon), and theoretical contexts of the genre are delineated with much critical acumen.... All of [the essays] are methodologically stringent and united by their endeavour to read texts against the grain of earlier interpretations, especially with regard to views on history and on how history and the past have proved functional within the national framework.... This is a carefully edited collection which succeeds in capturing the diversity of English-Canadian historical fiction as well as providing valuable categories for structuring this wide field, besides fresh and insightful close readings. National Plots will thus be indispensable reading for anyone interested in the ongoing and significant contributions of historical fiction to a Canadian sense of identity.'' -- Martin Löschnigg -- Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies, Vol. 23.2, September 2012, 201209

• National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada edited by Andrea Cabajsky and Brett Joseph GrubisicPart One A Usable Past? New Questions, New Directions""A Trading Shop So Crooked a Man Could Jump through the Cracks"": Counting the Cost of Fred Stenson's Trade in the Hudson's Bay Company Archive Kathleen VenemaPast Lives: Aimeé Laberge's Where the River Narrows and the Transgenerational Gene Pool Cynthia SugarsThe Orange Devil: Thomas Scott and the Canadian Historical Novel Albert BrazState of Shock: History and Crisis in Hugh MacLennan's Barometer Rising Robert David Stacey""And They May Get It Wrong, After All"": Reading Alice Munro's ""Meneseteung"" Tracy WarePart Two Unconventional Voices: Fiction Versus Recorded HistoryWindigo Killing: Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road Herb WyileTelling a Better Story: History, Fiction, and Rhetoric in George Copway's Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation Shelley HulanThe Racialization of Canadian History: African-Canadian Fiction, 1990-2005 Pilar Cuder-DomínguezTurning the Tables Aritha van HerkPart Three Literary Histories, Regional Contexts""To Free Itself, and Find Itself"": Writing a History for the Prairie West Claire Campbell""Old Lost Land"": Loss in Newfoundland Historical Fiction Paul ChafeImagining Vancouvers: Burning Waters, Ana Historic, and the Literary (Un)Settling of the Pacific Coast Owen PercyToo Little Geography, Too Much History: Writing the Balance in ""Meneseteung""Dennis Duffy ReferencesIndexContributorsAlbert Braz is an associate professor of comparative literature and English at the University of Alberta, where he is also the acting director of the Comparative Literature Program. He specializes in Canadian literature in both its national and inter-American contexts, and is particularly interested in literary representations of the encounters between Natives and Newcomers in Canada and the rest of the Americas. He is the author of The False Traitor: Louis Riel in Canadian Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2003).With Marie Carriére, he is co-editor of ""Comparative Canadian Literature in the Twenty-First Century/ La littérature canadienne au XXIéme siécle,"" a special issue of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 36, no. 2 (2009).Andrea Cabajsky is assistant professor of comparative Canadian literature at the Université de Moncton, where she teaches and does research in English and French-Canadian literature, and in gender and post-colonial studies. She publishes in the areas of Canadian historical fiction, theories of the novel, and comparative Canadian and British literatures. Her publications have appeared, or are appearing, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the Novel (Blackwell, 2010), Reading the Nation in English Literature (Routledge, 2009), Unsettled Remains: Canadian Literature and the Postcolonial Gothic (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009), and the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies (31, no. 1), among others.Claire Campbell is an associate professor in history and Canadian studies at Dalhousie University.Her fascination with the Prairie West (and the research for this chapter) began during a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta. Now her nostalgia for Prairie skies belongs to her wider interest in how history, nature, and the arts shape Canadas diverse regional landscapes.Paul Chafe teaches, among other courses, ""Writing as a Cultural Act"" and ""Cultures in Crisis"" at Ryerson University.He received his Ph.D. from Memorial University and is currently at work revising for publication his thesis on Newfoundland literature. His most recent publications include ""Beautiful Losers: The Flâneur in St. John's Literature"" in Newfoundland and Labrador Studies and ""The Rock Unnerved: Reflections on a Self-Reflective Society and Literature"" in the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies.Pilar Cuder-Domínguez is associate professor at the University of Huelva (Spain), where she teaches British and English-Canadian Literature. Her research interests are the intersections of gender, genre, nation, and race. She is the author of Margaret Atwood: A Beginner's Guide (Hodder & Stoughton, 2003), and the co-editor of five collections of essays (La mujer del texto al contexto [University of Huelva, 1996]; Exilios femeninos [University of Huelva, 2000]; Sederi XI [University of Huelva, 2002]; Espacios de Género [Alfar, 2005]; and The Female Wits [University of Huelva, 2006]). She has been visiting scholar at universities in Canada, the US, and the UK: McGill (1997), Dalhousie (1999), Northwestern (2002), Toronto (2004), and Cambridge (2006). Her current research deals with Canadian women's transnational poetics.Dennis Duffy, emeritus professor of English at the University of Toronto, and author of Sounding the Iceberg: An Essay on Canadian Historical Novels (ECW Press, 1986), is currently investigating memoirs and psychiatric practices during the Great War.Brett Josef Grubisic is the author of a novel, The Age of Cities (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006) and Understanding Beryl Bainbridge (University of South Carolina Press, 2008). He co-authored (with David L. Chapman) American Hunks: The Muscular Male Body in Popular Culture 1860-1970 (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009) and edited two fiction anthologies, Contra/Diction: New Queer Male Fiction (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1998) and (with Carellin Brooks) Carnal Nation: Brave New Sex Fictions (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000).He teaches English at the University of British Columbia.Shelley Hulan is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. Her essays and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews, Essays on Canadian Writing, The Journal of Canadian Studies, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, and Canadian Literature. A book chapter on Susie Frances Harrison's Crowded out! And Other Sketches will be published shortly in a critical edition of that text.Owen Percy recently earned his Ph.D. from the Department of English at the University of Calgary, where he currently teaches as a sessional instructor.He works mainly in the areas of post-colonial historiography, Canadian literary culture, and contemporary poetry in English, and has published articles and reviews in Canadian Literature, Studies in Canadian Literature, The Dalhousie Review, and ARIEL.Robert David Stacey is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. A graduate of York University, his Ph.D. thesis dealt with Canadian historical fiction and its relationship to the modes of georgic and pastoral. He has published numerous essays on Canadian fiction and poetry and is editor of RE: Reading the Postmodern-Canadian Literature and Criticism after Modernism, forthcoming from the University of Ottawa Press.Cynthia Sugars is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa, where she teaches Canadian literature and post-colonial theory. She is the author of numerous essays on Canadian literature, and has edited three collections: Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism (Broadview, 2004); Home-Work: Postcolonialism, Pedagogy, and Canadian Literature (University of Ottawa Press, 2004); and Unsettled Remains: Canadian Literature and the Postcolonial Gothic (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009). She has also recently published (with Laura Moss) a two-volume anthology of Canadian literature entitled Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts (Pearson/Penguin, 2009).Aritha van Herk is the author of five novels, including No Fixed Address and Restlessness. Her cross-genre work has resulted in a geografictione entitled Places Far from Ellesmere (Red Deer College Press, 1990), and two ficto-critical collections, A Frozen Tongue (Dangaroo Press, 1992) and In Visible Ink (NeWest Press, 1991). Her most recent books, Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta (Viking, 2001) and Audacious and Adamant (Key Porter Books, 2007), engage with regional and provincial history. She teaches creative writing and Canadian literature in the Department of English at the University of Calgary.Kathleen Venema is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Winnipeg. She has written articles on Canadian literature, Canadian exploration literature, and Hudson's Bay Company correspondence in various publications, including Re/Calling Early Canada (University of Alberta, 2005) and her co-edited volume, Women Writing Home 1700-1920: Canada (Pickering & Chatto, 2006). Her article, ""Civilized Heroes in the Canadian Wilderness: How Gothic Narrative Saves Alexander Henry's Textual Skin,"" appeared in (A)Symmetries in the Americas (Editora Caetes, 2007) and she has an article forthcoming in Basements and Attics: Explorations in the Materiality and Ethics of Canadian Women's Archives (Wilfrid Laurier University Press).Tracy Ware teaches Canadian literature and Romanticism at Queen's University. He has published on Wordsworth, Shelley, Poe, Trilling, Naipaul, Keneally, and various aspects of Canadian literature.Herb Wyile is a full professor in English at Acadia University. He is the author of Speculative Fictions: Contemporary Canadian Novelists and the Writing of History (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002) and Speaking in the Past Tense: Canadian Novelists on Writing Historical Fiction (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007), and co-editor of Past Matters: History in Canadian Fiction, a special issue of Studies in Canadian Literature (2002).He has also published articles on historical fiction by Jane Urquhart, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Michael Crummey, Margaret Sweatman, George Elliott Clarke, and Wayne Johnston.