Criticism that takes an ideological approach to Canadian writing is scarce; political-rhetorical studies are even more uncommon. In this original approach to postwar Canadian fiction Glenn Deer presents provocative readings of ideologies as well as experiments with authorial stances.

Racial Attitudes in English-Canadian Fiction is a critical overview of the appearances and consequences of racism in English-Canadian fiction published between 1905 and 1980. Based on an analysis of traditional expressions in literature of group solidarity and resentment, the study screens English-Canadian novels for fictional representations of such feelings. Beginning with the English-Canadian reaction to the mass influx of immigrants into Western Canada after World War One, it examines the fiction of novelists such as Ralph Connor and Nellie McClung. The author then suggests that the cumulative effect of a number of individual voices, such as Grove and Salverson, constituted a counter-reaction which has been made more positive by Laurence, Lysenko, Richler and Clarke. The “debate” between these two sides, carried on in fictional and non-fictional writing, is seen to be in part resolved in synthesis after World War Two, as attitudes are forced by wartime alliances and intellectual pressures into a qualified liberalism. The author shows how single novels by Graham, Bodsworth, and Callaghan demonstrated a new concern for the exposure and eradication of racial discrimination, an attitude taken further by the works of Wiebe and Klein. The book concentrates on single texts that best portray deliberately or not, racist ideology or anti-racist arguments, and attempts to explain the arousal in Canada of such ideas.

Much of the scholarship on twentieth-century Canadian literature has argued that English-Canadian fiction was plagued by backwardness and an inability to engage fully with the movement of modernism that was so prevalent in British and American fiction and poetry. Modern Realism in English-Canadian Fiction re-evaluates Canadian literary culture to posit that it has been misunderstood because it is a distinct genre, a regional form of the larger international modernist movement. Examining literary magazines, manifestos, archival documents, and major writers such as Frederick Philip Grove, Morley Callaghan, and Raymond Knister, Colin Hill identifies a 'modern realism' that crosses regions as well as urban and rural divides. A bold reading of the modern-realist aesthetic and an articulate challenge to several enduring and limiting myths about Canadian writing, Modern Realism in English- Canadian Fiction will stimulate important debate in literary circles everywhere.

Rewriting Apocalypse in Contemporary Canadian Fiction is the first book to explore the literary, psychological, political, and cultural repercussions of the apocalypse in the fiction of Timothy Finley, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, Thomas King, and Joy Kogawa. While writers from diverse nations have adopted and adapted the biblical narrative, these Canadian authors introduce particular twists to the familiar myth of the end. Goldman demonstrates that they share a marked concern with purgation of the non-elect, the loss experienced by the non-elect, and the traumatic impact of apocalyptic violence. She also analyzes Canadian apocalyptic accounts as crisis literature written in the context of the Cold War - written against the fear of total destruction.

Voyageur Classics is a series of special new versions of Canadian classics, with added material and special introductions by noted experts. This bundle contains some of the greatest Canadian fiction, including influential literature from Quebec (Maria Chapdelaine, The Town Below), a collection of the best of the legendary Pauline Johnson, Peregrine Acland’s gripping Great War novel All Else is Folly, a classic tale of Irish immigration (The Yellow Briar), and great novels from the renowned Hugh Garner (The Storm Below) and Wyndham Lewis (Self Condemned). Any reader with an interest not only in Canadian literature, but in great fiction in general, will find this collection of great works an essential addition to their collection. Includes All Else Is Folly Pauline Johnson The Town Below Self Condemned Storm Below The Yellow Briar Maria Chapdelaine

Hutcheon discusses the theory and practice of postmodernism as seen through both contemporary cultural theory and the writings of Audrey Thomas, Michael Ondaatje, Robert Koretsch, Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood, Jack Hodgins, Aritha Van Herk, Leonard Cohen, Susan Swan, Clark Blaise, GeorgeBowring, Chris Scott, and others.