On March 25, 2004, twenty-one graduate students from Sherbrooke, Montreal, Moncton, Toronto, Edmonton and Erlangen, Germany gathered in Sherbrooke to signal the many ways in which the study of Comparative Canadian Literature has surpassed the expectations of its founders. The research documented in this book reaches beyond the originating binary to enlarge and strengthen this profound and varied field of study.
In a lively and optimistic exchange of experience and ideas, keynote speakers Sheila Fischman and Naïm Kattan created a backdrop against which to appreciate each of the graduate papers that followed - Fischman focussing on her pragmatic, successful approach to translation, and Kattan emphasizing the standards of tolerance amid cultural and social diversity that Canada has set for itself and other countries. (Michelle Ariss, Simon Gilbert, Suzanne O'Connor)
In this volume of essays, we have gone beyond what people generally assume to be the narrow role of comparative literature - comparing two national literatures. The graduate students in Littérature canadienne comparée at Université de Sherbrooke are reaching for their own place in an ever-widening pool of methodologies and interests, and this is reflected in the essays collected here on topics ranging from literary translation to aboriginal autobiography, from computer data systems for comparative research to collective memory, from national aesthetics and literary prizes to urban fiction, from transnational identity to the role of editors in the creation of a national imaginary. There can be no more pleasant way of diving into these new approaches and methods than doing so with friends of the program, alumni, and visiting students from other universities. (Roxanne Rimstead)
ISBN: 0-9733525-4-X
220 Pages, Paperback
Price: $33.95 US
