First full-length investigation into Canadian literary medievalism as a discrete phenomenon. The essays in this volume consider what is original and distinctive about the manifestation of medievalism in Canadian literature and its origins and its subsequent growth and development: from the first novel published in Canada written by a Canadian-born author, Julia Beckwith Hart's 'St. Ursula's Convent' (1824), to the recent work of the best-selling novelist Patrick DeWitt ('Undermajordomo Minor', published in 2015). Topics addressed include the strong strain of medievalist fantasy itself in the work of the young-adult author Kit Pearson, and the longer novels of Charles de Lint, Steven Erikson, and Guy Gavriel Kay; the medievalist inclinations of Archibald Lampman and W. W. Campbell, well-known nineteenth-century Canadian poets; and the often-studied 'Wacousta' by John Richardson, first published in 1832. Chapters also cover early Canadian periodicals' engagement with orientalist medievalism; and works by twentieth-century writers such as the irrepressible Earle Birney, the witty and intellectual Robertson Davies, and the fascinating and learned Margaret Atwood.
Author(s): M. Jane Toswell, Anna Czarnowus (eds.)
Series: Medievalism, 17
Publisher: D. S. Brewer
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 218
City: Cambridge
Introduction: English Canadian Medievalism / M. J. Toswell and Anna Czarnowus 1
1. “Men of the North”: Archibald Lampman’s Use of Incidents in the Lives of Medieval Monarchs and Aristocrats / D. M. R. Bentley 17
2. “Going Back to the Middle Ages”: Tracing Medievalism in Julia Beckwith Hart’s 'St. Ursula’s Convent' and John Richardson’s 'Wacousta' / Agnieszka Kliś-Brodowska 36
3. John Richardson’s 'Wacousta' and the Transfer of Medievalist Romance / Anna Czarnowus 52
4. A Canadian Caliban in King Arthur’s Court: Materialist Medievalism and Northern Gothic in William Wilfred Campbell’s 'Mordred' / Brian Johnson 66
5. Orientalist Medievalism in Early Canadian Periodicals / Laurel Ryan 83
6. The Collegiate Gothic: Legitimacy and Inheritance in Robertson Davies’s 'The Rebel Angels' / David Watt 97
7. Earle Birney as Public Poet: a Canadian Chaucer? / M. J. Toswell 113
8. “That’s what you get for being food”: Margaret Atwood’s Symbolic Cannibalism / Dominika Ruszkiewicz 129
9. Lost in Allegory: Grief and Chivalry in Kit Pearson’s 'A Perfect, Gentle Knight' / Cory James Rushton 143
10. Remembering the Romance: Medievalist Romance in Fantasy Fiction by Guy Gavriel Kay and Charles de Lint / Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun 155
11 .Medievalisms and Romance Traditions in Guy Gavriel Kay’s 'Ysabel' / Ewa Drab 172
12. The Medieval Methods of Patrick DeWitt: 'Undermajordomo Minor' / Michael Fox 189
Index 205
