New Contexts of Canadian Criticism

by Ajay Heble (Editor)

Times change, lives change, and the terms we need to describe our literature or society or condition―what Raymond Williams calls “keywords”―change with them. Perhaps the most significant development in the quarter-century since Eli Mandel edited his anthology Contexts of Canadian Criticism has been the growing recognition that not only do different people need different terms, but the same terms have different meanings for different people and in different contexts. Nation, history, culture, art, identity―the positions we take discussing these and other issues can lead to conflict, but also hold the promise of a new sort of community. Speaking of First Nations people and their literature, Beth Brant observes that “Our connections … are like the threads of a weaving. … While the colour and beauty of each thread is unique and important, together they make a communal material of strength and durability.” New Contexts of Canadian Criticism is designed to be read, to work, in much the same manner.

424 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 1997

Reviews

[Alieda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I am getting through it (mostly). Sometimes I find it hard to wrap my little poetics-character-plot-loving brain around these concepts. I find it amazing though, that literature academics are so ego-centric that they practically believe that the whole world would crumble without literature. Critics believe that their work is of utmost importance to humanity, but they ignore the fact that so few people ever access their work, even read a single essay, never mind understand their theories or use them in any meaningful way (besides maybe some kind of trickle-down effect). I love books, and I love literature, but I still think that television, the internet, mass-market magazines, and mainstream pop fiction are more culturally important these days than anything these geniuses have to say about postcolonialism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, etc.