Turner examines the manner in which a new world culture represents itself, creates its origins, and constructs and understands the construction of its cultural history. She supports her theory with an analysis of paradigmatic texts by John Richardson, Frederick Philip Grove, Sheila Watson, Robert Kroetsch, and Jane Urquhart that articulate the predicament of the new world writer. Imagining Culture reveals the haunting of language and imagination that attends the search for origins and belonging, and shows how Canadian writers enact the processes of inhabiting the new world and imagining its culture.

Turner examines the manner in which a new world culture represents itself, creates its origins, and constructs and understands the construction of its cultural history. She supports her theory with an analysis of paradigmatic texts by John Richardson, Frederick Philip Grove, Sheila Watson, Robert Kroetsch, and Jane Urquhart that articulate the predicament of the new world writer. Imagining Culture reveals the haunting of language and imagination that attends the search for origins and belonging, and shows how Canadian writers enact the processes of inhabiting the new world and imagining its culture.