Worrying the nation imagining a national literature in English Canada - Kertzer, Jonathan (University of Toronto Press, 1998)
Includes bibliographical references and index
"Worrying the Nation is a critical fretting about the possibility of a national literature in Canada at a time when the very idea of the nation as a viable conceptual/literary category has been called into question." "Jonathan Kertzer stakes out the theoretical ground where three competing discourses (national + literary + history) intersect. He shows how the legacy of Herder and Hegel's romantic historicism both inspired and baffled literary historians in English Canada, who found their fragmentary country unsuited to the romantic model. Kertzer illustrates this difficulty in an analysis of three flawed attempts at poetic nation-buildingOliver Goldsmith's The Rising Village, E.J. Pratt's Towards the Last Spike, and Dennis Lee's Civil Elegies - then shows how disillusionment among more recent critics and writers has led to new models of sociability, as reflected in the novels of Joy Kogawa and Daphne Marlatt. Finally, Kertzer argues that while the nation remains an inevitable category of both political and literary thought, it must be used subtly and self-critically to articulate the 'motley space' of a national life."--Jacket
1 - National + Literary + History -- - 2 - The National Ghost -- - 3 - Nation Building -- - 4 - The Nation as Monster -- - 5 - Worrying the Nation