FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W2021573088> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W2021573088 endingPage "869" @default.
• W2021573088 startingPage "867" @default.
• W2021573088 abstract "Reviewed by: Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone Canadian Novel since 1967 Arnold E. Davidson Frank Davey. Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone Canadian Novel since 1967. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993. x + 277 pp. $45.00 cloth, $17.95 paper. Frank Davey’s Post National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone-Canadian Novel might better be subtitled “The Apolitics of the Anglophone-Canadian Novel” and for reasons that can partly be laid at Davey’s own door. Briefly, as much as anyone, he prompted, especially with his influential Surviving the Paraphrase, the repudiation of Canada’s thematic criticism, the attempt in the seventies by such critics as Northrop Frye in The Bush Garden and Margaret Atwood in Survival to discern, as even those titles suggest, some metaformulation of national identity in a selected body of the nation’s texts. But Davey now chides English Canadian authors for not portraying versions of contemporary [End Page 867] Canada in all its social and political complexity, for, in effect, mislearning too well the earlier lesson intended for the critics and thus giving us Canadian novels “Minus Canada” (to cite another influential title in the campaign against thematic criticism). Nor is there any contradiction in this new agenda. The consideration that a country’s literature cannot be reduced to a necessarily dubious essentialized statement of national identity hardly precludes a fictional portrayal of the different discourses as to what the nation might be. Nevertheless, if contemporary English Canadian fiction provides us mostly with “emotionally crippled protagonists, incapable of complex networks of friendships and relationships” and who “survive in solitude, exclusionary pairs, or minimal family units,” maybe Margaret Atwood with Survival was right after all. In the course of arguing that contemporary Canadian fiction has “little . . . interest . . . in the social and political processes by which communities are constituted or modern states . . . maintained,” Davey has much of value to say about both the current state of Canada (particularly the free-trade debate and the ongoing constitutional crisis) as well as the sixteen novels he considers. But there do seem to be some problems in his thematizing of his own critical focus. When he notes, for example, Michael Ondaatje’s “preference for art over history, economics, and cultural contest,” he similarly registers his own preference for history, economics, and cultural contest over art. Similarly, one wonders if Davey finds Atwood’s Cat’s Eye “heavily overlaid with foreign signs” partly because he was looking for such overlay and the comparative absence of signs of Canada. This suspicion that Post-National Arguments is perhaps too much driven by its own thesis is not allayed by Davey occasionally obviously bending interpretation to fit that thesis, as when he notes that “when [Stephen Risley’s] life is threatened [in Cat’s Eye, Stephen] is without friends, institutional support, or the effective assistance of his national government,” as if these three items are precisely what you require when the terrorists who hijacked your flight are casting about for someone to kill. Davey’s reading of signs (and the sixteen novels he examines are mostly read semiotically) also too much overlooks other possible readings of the same sign. Thus “Naomi’s loss of her mother” in Obasan certainly signals the “personal,” the psychoanalytic, “the revisiting of private trauma.” But it also represents the government policies that divided families with the outbreak of the war as well as the continuing official racism whereby the mother was refused reentry into [End Page 868] Canada after the war, and it further signifies the transnational violence of war and, more specifically, of nuclear weapons, for the atomic bomb, too, parts mother and daughter. Canada, as a nation, signifies differently in each of these other significations but can hardly be read as missing. What signs to read and how to read them? “In nearly all of the novels set outside of Quebec,” Davey writes, “the transnational mapping appears to eliminate or severely reduce the significance of Quebec as a Canadian sign, as if on a world stage of transnational issues and global signification the presence or absence of Quebec in the Canadian federation were of minor consequence.” Change “Quebec” to “British..." @default.
• W2021573088 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W2021573088 creator A5090351659 @default.
• W2021573088 date "1994-01-01" @default.
• W2021573088 modified "2023-10-17" @default.
• W2021573088 title "Post-National Arguments: the Politics of the Anglophone Canadian Novel since 1967" @default.
• W2021573088 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.1994.0018" @default.
• W2021573088 hasPublicationYear "1994" @default.
• W2021573088 type Work @default.
• W2021573088 sameAs 2021573088 @default.
• W2021573088 citedByCount "0" @default.
• W2021573088 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W2021573088 hasAuthorship W2021573088A5090351659 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C107038049 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C111472728 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C138885662 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C142932270 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C144024400 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C2776728590 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C2778355321 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C2778407155 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C2780922921 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C29595303 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C41895202 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C65290094 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C7991579 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C107038049 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C111472728 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C124952713 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C138885662 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C142362112 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C142932270 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C144024400 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C17744445 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C199539241 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C2776728590 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C2778355321 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C2778407155 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C2780922921 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C29595303 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C41895202 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C65290094 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C7991579 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C94625758 @default.
• W2021573088 hasConceptScore W2021573088C95457728 @default.
• W2021573088 hasIssue "4" @default.
• W2021573088 hasLocation W20215730881 @default.
• W2021573088 hasOpenAccess W2021573088 @default.
• W2021573088 hasPrimaryLocation W20215730881 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2021573088 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2028910392 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2032441052 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2348957256 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2349587434 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2372804188 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2384632473 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2507065069 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2512059224 @default.
• W2021573088 hasRelatedWork W2942195444 @default.
• W2021573088 hasVolume "40" @default.
• W2021573088 isParatext "false" @default.
• W2021573088 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W2021573088 magId "2021573088" @default.
• W2021573088 workType "article" @default.