Refractions of Canada in European Literature and Culture

Heinz Antor, Gordon Bölling, Annette Kern-Stähler, Klaus Stierstorfer, Heinz Antor, Gordon Bölling, Annette Kern-Stähler, Klaus Stierstorfer

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9783110183429
• eBook ISBN: 9783110919240
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Ever since the first exploratory expeditions in the early modern period, North America has epitomized to Europeans a promise and the hope for the fulfilment of great expectations, be it of more freedom, greater wealth, social liberation or religious tolerance. While numerous features in this dialogic intercontinental relationship will hold true for North America in its entirety, the vast northern territories which we know as Canada today began to emerge early on as a specific iconic location in European mind-maps, and they definitely acquired a distinctive profile after the formation of the USA. As a rich source of cultural exchange and an important partner in political and economic cooperation Canada has come to occupy an important position in the cultural discourses of many European nations. It is these refractions and images of Canada which this volume thoroughly explores in European literature and culture. The contributions include literature, philosophy, language, life-writing and the concept of 'Heimat' (homeland) as well as the cultural impact of the World Wars. While there is an emphasis on literary texts, other fields of cultural representation are also included.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Contents
• Introduction: Canada from European Perspectives
• The Archeology of a Novel: An Afterword to The Blue Mountains of China
• In Between: Canada in the View of European Pioneers and Emigrants
• “A New Athens Rising Near the Pole”?: The Canadian Experience in Frances Brooke’s The History of Emily Montague (1769)
• Anna Brownell Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838): A European Woman’s View of the New World
• “Capable of Great Improvement”: Catharine Parr Traill’s Images of Canada in The Young Emigrants (1826)
• Deserts and Visions of Paradise: The Representation of the Canadian Landscape in Advertisements and Guides for Canadian Immigrants
• Destination and Destiny: Contemporary Canadian Plays on Immigrants
• News From Abroad: Canada in the View of European Travellers, Traders, and Adventurers
• The Representation of Canada in Novels by Frederick Marryat and Robert Michael Ballantyne
• Victorians Abroad: Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope in Canada
• “Alle diese Länder sind unbekannt”: Canada in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century German Travel Literature
• “A Canadian Literature?”: Elizabeth Smart and the Failures of Nationalism
• In Search of Cathaia – Voyages into the Unexpected
• Re-Enacting the Arctic Voyage: The Northwest Passage in British Literature
• Reflections at Home: Canada in the View of Recent European Writers
• Stuffed Mooseheads: Canada as (Missing) Cliche in European Theatre
• Cultural Reductionism and the Reception of Canadian Literature in Germany
• Wildlife Abounds? The Photographic Deconstruction of a Canadian Cliche in Robert Gernhardt’s Satire “Blanket Creek oder Verwilderte Wünsche”
• “One Sees Only What One Knows”: German Popular Literature and its Images of Canada
• Canada as a Role Model? Reflections of a Country in Post-War German Youth Fiction
• What makes a Canadian? Strategies of Presenting Canadianness in Teaching Materials
• List of Contributors