Canadian literature is written in several languages including English, French, and to some degree various Indigenous languages. It is often divided into French- and English-language literatures, which are rooted in the literary traditions of France and Britain, respectively.[1] The earliest Canadian narratives were of travel and exploration.[2]
Indigenous peoples of Canada are culturally diverse.[3] Each group has its own literature, language and culture.[4][3] The term "Indigenous literature" therefore can be misleading, as writer Jeannette Armstrong states in one interview, "I would stay away from the idea of "Native" literature, there is no such thing. There is Mohawk literature, there is Okanagan literature, but there is no generic Native in Canada".[3]
In 1802, the Lower Canada legislative library was founded. All books it contained were subsequently moved to the Canadian parliament in Montreal when the two Canadas, Lower and Upper, were united. On April 25, 1849 the Canadian parliament was burned along with thousands of French Canadian books and a few hundred English books. A consequence of this event was the mistaken impression that from the early settlements until the 1820s, Quebec had virtually no literature.
It was the rise of Quebec patriotism and the 1837 Lower Canada Rebellion, in addition to a modern system of primary school education, which led to the rise of French-Canadian fiction. L'influence d'un livre by Philippe-Ignace-Francois Aubert de Gaspé is widely regarded as the first French-Canadian novel. The genres which first became popular were the rural novel and the historical novel. French authors were influential, especially authors like Balzac.
In 1866, Father Henri-Raymond Casgrain became one of Quebec's first literary theorists. He argued that literature's goal should be to project an image of proper Catholic morality. However, a few authors like Louis-Honoré Fréchette and Arthur Buies broke the conventions to write more interesting works.
This pattern continued until the 1930s with a new group of authors educated at the Université Laval and the Université de Montréal. Novels with psychological and sociological foundations became the norm. Gabrielle Roy and Anne Hébert even began to earn international acclaim, which had not happened to French-Canadian literature before. During this period, Quebec theatre, which had previously been melodramas and comedies, became far more involved.
French-Canadian literature began to greatly expand with the turmoil of the Second World War, the beginnings of industrialization in the 1950s, and most especially the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s. French-Canadian literature also began to attract a great deal of attention globally, with AcadiannovelistAntonine Maillet winning the Prix Goncourt in 1979.[5] An experimental branch of Québécois literature also developed; for instance the poet Nicole Brossard wrote in a formalist style. In 1979, Roch Carrier wrote the story The Hockey Sweater, which highlighted the cultural and social tensions between English and French speaking Canada.
Because Canada only officially became a country following the unification, or 'confederation' of several colonies, including Upper and Lower Canada, into one nation on July 1, 1867, it has been argued that literature written before this time was colonial. The book often considered to be the first work of Canadian literature is The History of Emily Montague by Frances Brooke, published in 1769. Brooke wrote the novel in Sillery, Quebec following the Conquest of New France. Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, English sisters who adopted the country as their own, moved to Upper Canada in 1832. They recorded their experiences as pioneers in Parr Traill's The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Canadian Crusoes (1852), and Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush (1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853). However, both women wrote until their deaths, placing them in the country for more than 50 years and certainly well past Confederation. Moreover, their books often dealt with survival and the rugged Canadian environment; these themes re-appear in other Canadian works, including Margaret Atwood's Survival. Moodie and Parr Trail's sister, Agnes Strickland, remained in England and wrote elegant royal biographies, creating a stark contrast between Canadian and English literatures.
However, one of the earliest Canadian writers virtually always included in Canadian literary anthologies is Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865), born and raised in Nova Scotia, who died just two years before Canada's official birth. He is remembered for his comic character, Sam Slick, who appeared in The Clockmaker and other humorous works throughout Haliburton's life.
During this period, E. Pauline Johnson and William Henry Drummond were writing popular poetry – Johnson's based on her part-Mohawk heritage, and Drummond, the Poet of the Habitant, writing dialect verse.
Perhaps reacting against a tradition that largely emphasized the wilderness and the small town and country experience, Leonard Cohen wrote the novel Beautiful Losers (1966). It was labelled by one reviewer "the most revolting book ever written in Canada".[7] In time, however, this novel was considered a Canadian classic. Despite beginning his career as a poet of major importance, Cohen is perhaps best known as a folk singer and songwriter, with an international following.
Following World War II, writers such as Mavis Gallant, Mordecai Richler, Norman Levine, Sheila Watson, Margaret Laurence and Irving Layton added to the Modernist influence in Canadian literature previously introduced by F. R. Scott, A. J. M. Smith and others associated with the McGill Fortnightly. This influence, at first, was not broadly appreciated. Norman Levine's Canada Made Me,[8] a travelogue that presented a sour interpretation of the country in 1958, for example, was widely rejected.
After 1967, the country's centennial year, the national government increased funding to publishers and numerous small presses began operating throughout the country.[9] The best-known Canadian children's writers include L. M. Montgomery and Monica Hughes.
This group, along with Nobel Laureate Alice Munro, who has been called the best living writer of short stories in English,[10] were part of a 'new wave' of Canadian writers, some starting their careers in the 1950s. The first to elevate Canadian Literature to the world stage were Lucy Maud Montgomery, Stephen Leacock, Mazo de la Roche, and Morley Callaghan. During the post-war decades Canadian literature, as were Australian and New Zealand literature, viewed as an appendage to British Literature. When academic Clara Thomas decided in the 1940s to concentrate on Canadian literature for her master's thesis, the idea was so novel and so radical that word of her decision reached The Globe and Mail books editor William Arthur Deacon, who then personally reached out to Thomas to pledge his and the newspaper's resources in support of her work.[11]
A notable anthology of Canadian poetry is The New Oxford book of Canadian Verse, edited by Margaret Atwood ( ISBN0-19-540450-5).
Anne Carson is probably the best known Canadian poet living today. Carson in 1996 won the Lannan Literary Award for poetry. The foundation's awards in 2006 for poetry, fiction and nonfiction each came with $US 150,000.
Canadian authors who have won international awards
Canadian Authors Association Awards for Adult Literature, honouring works by Canadian writers that achieve excellence without sacrificing popular appeal since 1975[13]
Cynthia Sugars and Eleanor Ty, eds. (2015). Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory. Oxford Univ. Press, 493pp. Scholarly essays on how cultural memory is reflected in Canadian fiction, poetry, drama, films, etc.
Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, and literary critic. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Her best-known work is the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
Philip Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer and essayist.
Anne Patricia Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1998.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1996.
Canadian poetry is poetry of or typical of Canada. The term encompasses poetry written in Canada or by Canadian people in the official languages of English and French, and an increasingly prominent body of work in both other European and Indigenous languages.
Nicole Brossard is a French-Canadian formalist poet and novelist. Her work is known for exploration of feminist themes and for challenging masculine-oriented language and points of view in French literature.
Alice Ann Munro was a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her work tends to move forward and backward in time, with integrated short story cycles.
This is an article about literature in Quebec.
The Writers' Trust of Canada is a registered charity which provides financial support to Canadian writers.
The Governor General's Award for English-language fiction is a Canadian literary award that annually recognizes one Canadian writer for a fiction book written in English. It is one of fourteen Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit, seven each for creators of English- and French-language books. The awards was created by the Canadian Authors Association in partnership with Lord Tweedsmuir in 1936. In 1959, the award became part of the Governor General's Awards program at the Canada Council for the Arts in 1959. The age requirement is 18 and up.
This is a list of recipients and nominees of the Governor General's Awards award for English-language poetry. The award was created in 1981 when the Governor General's Award for English language poetry or drama was divided.
Bruce Meyer is a Canadian poet, broadcaster, and educator. He has authored more than 64 books of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, and literary journalism. He is a professor of Writing and Communications at Georgian College in Barrie and a Visiting Associate at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he has taught Poetry, Non-Fiction, and Comparative Literature.
John Robert Colombo, CM is a Canadian writer, editor, and poet. He has published over 200 titles, including major anthologies and reference works.
Matthew F. Tierney is a Canadian poet.
Rosemary Sullivan is a Canadian poet, biographer, and anthologist. She is also a professor emerita at University of Toronto.
The Quebec Writers' Federation Awards are a series of Canadian literary awards, presented annually by the Quebec Writers' Federation to the best works of literature in English by writers from Quebec. They were known from 1988 to 1998 as the QSPELL Awards.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2016.
The following is a list of winners and nominees in French-language categories for the Trillium Book Award, a Canadian literary award presented by Ontario Creates to honour books published by writers resident in the province of Ontario. Separate awards have been presented for English-language literature since 1994; for the winners and nominees in English-language categories, see Trillium Book Award, English.
↑ ReutersArchived 2010-01-13 at the Wayback Machine on Anne of Green Gables: ""Anne of Green Gables" has sold more than 50 million copies and been translated into 20 languages, according to Penguin." (19 March 2008)
↑ "For a long time Alice Munro has been compared with Chekhov; John Updike would add Tolstoy, and AS Byatt would say Guy de Maupassant and Flaubert. Munro is often called the best living writer of short stories in English; the words "short story" are frequently dropped." Riches of a Double Life, Ada Edemariam, Guardian Online, retrieved 11 October 2006.
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