Letteratura Canadese

NATIONAL FILM BOARD OF CANADA (1939)

there was one in uk to educate people (~ italy) / in canada is used to help create national identity

and to educate →

(a) Grierson (1898-1972) founder of documentary film board of canada / in uk had collaborators

/ worked with bbc / also wanted to deal with cartoons, thought they were important to educate

people / he left cartoons to ….

→ →

(b) … MacLaren already produced cartoons for uk film board / drew directly on films not

based on real shooting, but on the movement created by animation itself (step-by-step

shooting) / created 24 frames to be seen in 1 second, so the image remains in the human eye

→

and created the illusion of movement / =/= from disney philosophy homologation + great

→

economic investment used all means to create best possible work, while he wanted a result

→ →

from poor means simple materials to create quality animation movies / became famous

1938 went to china to teach them how to make films with poor means, the went to india to

produce a movie / discreet + shy person / won Nobel Prize / technical result on the verge of

→

attraction appreciated by Picasso

→

• The Blackbird (1958) based on old french song, is part of a series of cartoons aimed at

→

retrieving songs and getting kids a chance to know them / cut-out technique ~ decoupage:

white paper striped combined together to make shapes

→

• A chairy tale democratic + pacifistic view / person cannot sit, chair comes near but won’t let

him sit, then he understands the chair has a soul, they start dialoguing and they come to

→

understand each other so he can sit / pixelation technique real actor used as if he’s a frame

of the cartoon →

• The Neighbors (1957) when a flower springs between their properties they start fighting

and eventually kill each other and their families for it, along with the flower / pixelation

technique → →

(c) Caroline Leaf MacLaren collaborator, interested in native people many shorts on

aborigine culture → →

• The Owl Who Married the Goose (1974) eskimo song + language to rebuild a national

idea they have to start from the 1st people who lived there / silence was also an attempt to go

→

back to the origins of canada / table glass technique light from below the glass + creates

figures with sand

→

(d) Frederick Back McLaren collaborator, dutch origin / largest number of shirts + won 2

→

Oscars / history, environment, culture / duality native environment + non-transformed

environment →

• Crack (1981) attempt to link past and present / through story of a chair, he goes through

different steps of history of canada / chair becomes an animate object, links past to present /

→

each frame is a =/= drawing quaking effect

→

• The Man who Planted the Tree ecological concern / drawn from one of Jean Glorio’s short

stories / this man wants to recreate nature where others have destroyed it / quaking effect

INTRO TO CANADIAN RENEISSANCE

→

1960s decade of protest, progressive anti-conformism / 1968 peak: hippies + women liberation

→

movements / Vietnam war (US) traumatic experience, considered a dystopia events (=/= from

am dream)

→

1970s changes in eu + us + ca (ita referendum on abortions + divorce) / consideration of

woman as an individual with rights and desires / acceptance of =/= ways of thinking and of =/=

cultures →

60s - 70s post-modern board movement was born, a non-specific term

victorian lit ( ) modernism (1920) post-modernism

narrator omniscent 1st person, subjective individual conscience is

shattered, multiple povs,

not a consistent/unitarian

person

time [*] chrono kairos

way of narration punctuation, reader stream of consciousness writing shattered, often

guided open-ending, =/=

→

narrative styles

politormic narrative

characters round features presented by inconsistent, 2

characters themselves, contrasting features in

subjective self-narration the same character, split

in 2, contradictory

wishes/drives

→

innovation destruction of point of reference / wide use of irony (say 1 thing, mean the opposite

) + parody (post modernism artists tried to rewrite someone else’s

[hutchion wrote an essay on this]

writing by turning it into a parody) / open-ending / 3 main properties

→ →

1. metatextuality reflection of the text itself makes reference to the novel being written /

writer breaks mutual agreement that what was being written was true

→

2. intertextuality relationship established between 2 texts (reference to other books with

quotations, etc)

→

3. intratextuality internal reference, within the same work / makes reference to what has been

written before →

Thomas Pynchon, The crying of lot 49 most famous us post-modernist, protagonist with

• unpredictable behaviors →

critical trend: Deconstructionism based on Heidegger philosophy (pessimist/almost nihilist) /

• →

Derrida brings his theories in the critical universe / based on close + deep reading to spot out

the contrasting/contradictoriness, the hidden meaning the writer didn’t explicitly pass through. At

Yale many were influenced (1966), particularly Hartman, Miller, De Man, Bloom (most famous,

→

but didn’t want to be recognized as one of them) they thoughts through close reading you

could destroy the text to find the inner meaning

→ → →

Canada eu + us influence + efforts to create national identity CANADIAN RENAISSANCE

process of gaining awareness of the specificities (=/= from other) of the literature happening in C,

detect what is c in c literature /

officially born when Margaret Atwood published Survival (1932), an essay

• [*]

→

FOUNDING MYTHS ~ American lit: 2 frontier + american dream // uk lit: myth of island

(insular mentality) → →

Margaret Atwood wants to spot out something specific for Canada founding myth: survival

it’s the central theme both in fr canada and in eng canada, the central theme / addressed to ca

people / important in the creation of sense of identity (“sense of here”)

→ →

CENTRAL CHARACTER the victim (metaphorically the protagonist) symbolic subdivision in

4 =/= attitudes/approaches: →

1. deny the fact you are a victim denial + accuse other member of their victimhood

2. acknowledge you’re a victim + attribute state of victimhood to forces beyond your control

→

3. fight this state not inevitable / don’t accept to be a victim

→

4. creative non-victim free yourself from the state of being a victim + creates literature

→

Carol Shields (1935-2003) Small Ceremonies (novels) + criticism on SM

• → →

Timothy Finley (1930-2002) Headhunter, influenced by SM most translated

• →

M. Lawrence (1926-1987) Stone Angel + The Diviner (novels)

• →

• Mordecai Richler (1931-2001) Jewish literature

→

Alice Munro 2013 Nobel prize

• →

MARGARET ATWOOD * (1939) appeared in many interviews/travelled a lot in eu

novels: the edible woman / surfacing / a lies grace / poetries: journals of SM / 2-headed poems /

the door →

a. Survival (1932) essay →

FOUNDING MYTHS ~ American lit: 2 frontier + american dream // uk lit: myth of island

(insular mentality) →

Margaret Atwood wants to spot out something specific for Canada founding myth: survival

→ it’s the central theme both in fr canada and in eng canada, the central theme / addressed to

ca people / important in the creation of sense of identity (“sense of here”)

→ →

CENTRAL CHARACTER the victim (metaphorically the protagonist) symbolic subdivision

in 4 =/= attitudes/approaches: →

1. deny the fact you are a victim denial + accuse other member of their victimhood

2. acknowledge you’re a victim + attribute state of victimhood to forces beyond your

control →

3. fight this state not inevitable / don’t accept to be a victim

→

4. creative non-victim free yourself from the state of being a victim + creates literature

→

b. Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970) was writing her doctorly on victorian literature then

started reading SM / attracted by the unsaid stuff in SM / poems not completely linked

→

epithet last line: pretends to be SM / 1st image though SM eyes

• →

SM attitude patriot + criticizes ca as a detached observer

• she didn’t want to rewrite her work, but a cycle of meditation upon pioneer life

• →

• us mental illness megalomania canada schizophrenia

→ →

violent duality SM fascinated by c wilderness + afraid of annihilation desire to get to know

• →

people as a way to escape wilderness problem individual - habitat/wilderness

→

Fry (?) garrison mentality =/= SM garrison against wilderness by writing + human relationship

• →

logical structure 3 parts

• → →

1. 1832 - 1840 arrival of SM to leaving for Belleville Roughing it in the Bush

→

Disembarking in Quebec animal/people happy but she isn’t / feels threatened by sense

• of being diverse

→

Further Arrival we come from dark reality but now we enter uncertainty / can’t

• understand / she’s a foreigner

→

2. 1840 - 1871 Belleville, years where she starts to “accept” c / accept her personal duality

→ Life in Clearing vs in the Bush →

Death of a Young Son by Drowning i’m not dislocated anymore because you have my

• (now dead) son

→

3. 1871 - 1970 elderly years (SM death: 1885) + period after death / personal inspiration

(imagines she feels / 20th century modernity tries to wipe her away but she refuses to be

canceled / last appearance on a bus in Toronto / metropolis ~ new forest, wilderness build

with skyscrapers, unexplored + threatening / she becomes the spirit of the place/earth

→ →

Alternate Thoughts from Underground she’s dead / reference to dinosaurs

• →

destroyed by climate she’s in her grave like a dinosaur, from here on everything starts

for her →

Last Poem doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by modernity / built a grave but she has

• ways to come to life again / speaks: modernity is all an illusion, wilderness is still there

and will inspire people →

MIGRATION FROM EU AFRICA ASIA intense from 1970s

→

during 1900 mosaic of culture

• → →

70s creation of Multicultural department series of initiatives in favor of the “other” /

• hyphenated culture could be published because of that

→ →

1982 Canada act multiculturalism act government ackno