Login
Create Account
Canadian Store (CAD)
You are currently shopping in our Canadian store. For orders outside of Canada, please switch to our international store. International and US orders are billed in US dollars.
 |
Archaeologies of an Uncertain FutureRecent Generations of Canadian Women Writing |
eBook Available
A critical study of memory and time in the work of recent Canadian women writers from Anne Michaels to Joy Kogawa.
An apocalyptic vision of planetary self-destruction provided the context for many late twentieth-century narratives. Women writers from Quebec and English Canada, including Margaret Atwood, Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska, Madeleine Gagnon, Betsy Warland, Marie-Claire Blais, and Nicole Brossard, redefined their relationship to time and narrative in order to tell a different, perhaps more hopeful, story. Using "archaeology" as a trope and a methodology, Karen McPherson's "critical excavations" of these women's writings pose questions about loss and mourning, survival and witnessing, devastation and writing, remembering and imagining.
In Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future, McPherson explores the memory work, alternative historiographies, and feminist aesthetics by which women writers revisit the past and reimagine the future. Grounded within critical discourses across many discplines, McPherson's analysis engages contemporary discussions about autobiographical genres, post-modern historiographies, memoirs, and literary genealogies.
In Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future, McPherson explores the memory work, alternative historiographies, and feminist aesthetics by which women writers revisit the past and reimagine the future. Grounded within critical discourses across many discplines, McPherson's analysis engages contemporary discussions about autobiographical genres, post-modern historiographies, memoirs, and literary genealogies.
Details
330 Pages, 6 x 9
ISBN 9780773531352
December 2006
Formats: Cloth, eBook
"While McPherson's book offers important insights to the scholar, it will also be of interest to the non-expert. The book is very well researched: just the careful and extensive discussion of the literature (in the broad sense) on memory is very valuable. McPherson mentions that she spent 10 years writing the book, and I can believe that 10 years were needed to produce a volume of such knowledge and insight." American Review of Canadian Studies
"McPherson is, simply put, a gifted, supple critic who makes us want to read (or reread) the novels she examines with such warmth and depth of understanding. Both students and scholars of Canadian and Quebec women's literature will find in McPherson's work a model and a motivation for future reading and research." Milena Santoro, Georgetown University
"McPherson is, simply put, a gifted, supple critic who makes us want to read (or reread) the novels she examines with such warmth and depth of understanding. Both students and scholars of Canadian and Quebec women's literature will find in McPherson's work a model and a motivation for future reading and research." Milena Santoro, Georgetown University
Karen S. McPherson is associate professor of French, University of Oregon, president of the Conseil International d'Études Francophones, and author of Incriminations: Guilty Women/Telling Stories.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xiii
Preface xv
Introduction Surviving the Century 3
1 The Language of Grief 32
2 Memory Works 58
3 Precarious Thresholds 116
4 Thinking the Future 167
5 Today and Tomorrow 205
Notes 225
Bibliography 275
Index 289
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xiii
Preface xv
Introduction Surviving the Century 3
1 The Language of Grief 32
2 Memory Works 58
3 Precarious Thresholds 116
4 Thinking the Future 167
5 Today and Tomorrow 205
Notes 225
Bibliography 275
Index 289
