Canadian Literature & Poetry
in English
Regional Literature
Encyclopedias, Dictionaries & Handbooks
The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature
A comprehensive, authoritative guide to many different genres,
topics, and aspects of Canadian literary history, including prairie literature.
The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature
A comprehensive introduction to major writers, genres and
topics in Canadian literature, including regionalism and urbanism.
The North
Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature
Focuses on the imaginative mystique of the wilderness of the
Canadian North. Writers discussed include Robert Service, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, E.J.
Pratt, Marian Engel, Margaret Laurence and Gwendolyn MacEwan.
PR 9185.2 .A95
2004
Stacks
Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture
An investigation of the idea of the “North” as an
element of Canada’s national identity and the development of this theme in Canadian
culture and Canadian literature.
Far off Metal River: Inuit Lands, Settler Stories, and the Making
of the Contemporary Arctic
Explores how Samuel Hearne’s account of the Bloody Falls
massacre has shaped the ongoing colonization and economic exploitation of the North.
The Atlantic Provinces
New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia
Biographical, critical, and bibliographic information about more
than 150 New Brunswick writers and literary subjects. Also includes Acadian and Francophone
authors.
New Brunswick at the Crossroads: Literary Ferment and Social
Change in the East
What is the relationship between literature and the society in
which it incubates? Are there common political, social, and economic factors that predominate
during periods of heightened literary activity?
This book considers these questions and explores the
relationships between periods of creative ferment in New Brunswick and the socio-cultural
conditions of those times.
Writers of Newfoundland and Labrador: Twentieth Century
Concise biographies of authors, accopanied by synopses and
samples of their published work.
PR 9189.6 .D4
1985
Reference
The Homing Place: Indigenous and Settler Literary Legacies of the
Atlantic
Bryant explores how colonized and Indigenous environments occupy
the same given geographical coordinates even while existing in distinct epistemological worlds
through the analysis of a wide range of northeastern texts, including Puritan captivity
narratives, Wabanaki wampum belts, and contemporary Innu poetry.
Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of
Atlantic-Canadian Literature
Explores how Atlantic-Canadian writers present a picture of the
region that is much more complex and less quaint than the stereotypes through which it is
typically viewed: Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, George Elliott Clarke, Rita Joe, Frank Barry,
Shaun Comish, and Bernice Morgan, among others.
Quebec
Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis
Traces the history of Montreal as the literary centre of Quebec
and Toronto as the literary centre of English Canada.
PR 9189.6 .L45
2010
Stacks
Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal, 1904–
1945
Examines the contributions of performers and other artists to
the Yiddish theatre and culture in Montreal in the first half of the twentieth century, with
consideration to the social landscape of the city.
At Odds in the World: Essays on Jewish-Canadian Women Writers
Examines the contributions of performers and other artists to
the Yiddish theatre and culture in Montreal in the first half of the twentieth century, with
consideration to the social landscape of the city.
PR 9188.2 .J48
P25 2008
Stacks
Jacob Isaac Segal (1896–1954): A Montreal Yiddish Poet and
His Milieu
Segal’s poetic production is referenced, translated and
rigorously analyzed, and includes over 100 pages of appendices, shedding light on the artistic,
spiritual, cultural and historical importance of his oeuvre.
Ontario
You Can’t Get There from Here: The Past As Present in
Small-Town Ontario Fiction
Focuses on four key Ontario authors—Stephen Leacock,
Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, and Jane Urquhart—as well as many secondary authors,
examining small-town representations in Canadian literature as sophisticated statements on
the effects of modernity in the increasingly urbanized and cosmopolitan provice.
Cultural Identities in Canadian Literature
A bilingual collection of essays on the themes of cultural
identities and immigrant writing in Canada. The emphasis is upon diversity as essays range in
subject matter from Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, and Marie-Claire Blais to Danny
Laferrière, Ukranian-Canadian plays, “Franglo-théâtre,” contemporary Acadian and
Africadian poetry and the Ontario Protestant novel.
PR 9185.2 .C85
1998
Stacks
Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis
Traces the history of Montreal as the literary centre of Quebec
and Toronto as the literary centre of English Canada.
PR 9189.6 .L45
2010
Stacks
Toronto: A Literary Guide
PR9187 .G37
1999
Reference
Imagining Toronto
Traces Toronto’s literary genealogies from their origins
in First-Nations stories to present-day graphic novels and analyzes the portrayal of the city
in local literature.
PR 9198.3 .T67
H37 2010
Stacks
The Prairies
Peel’s Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies to 1953
The revised and enlarged the previous, 1973 edition, this
bibliography is recognized as finest introduction to the literature of the Canadian Prairies.
The Literary History of Alberta
Volume One, “From Writing-on-Stone to World War II”
explores the provincial identity as something distinct from region, nation, empire or world.
PR 9198.2 .A4
M44 1998
Stacks
Writing Alberta: Building on a Literary Identity
Bio-literary discussions of historical figures, high
and critical studies of single texts, including the works of Robert Kroetsch, Sheila Watson,
Alice Major, Fred Stenson, David Albahari, and Nestor Dmytrow.
Unnamed Country: The Struggle for a Canadian Prairie Fiction
This book begins before the first prairie novel and traces the
growth of prairie fiction over the last century noting the influence of culture on man’s
reaction to the landscape.
Shaping a World Already Made: Landscape and Poetry of the Canadian
Prairies
Traci, a cultural geographer, explores how reading poetry
influences the way we see the Prairies.
The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology
An comprehensive anthology of fiction and nonfiction writings by
Black authors from the Prairies, from nineteenthth-century fur traders and pioneers to
avant-garde writers of the present day.
Includes correspondence, memoirs, excerpts from autobiographies
political treatises and writings, photographs, interviews, short stories, poems and other types
of writing from Daniel T. Williams, Mildred Jane Lewis Ware, George Washington Slater, Jr.
Lawrence Hill, Esi Edugyan, Miranda Martini, and other contributors.
Rewriting the Break Event: Mennonites and Migration in Canadian
Literature
Examines the fictionalization of the Mennonite break event (the
collapse of the “Mennonite Commonwealth” in the 1920s) through strains of
religious, ethnic, trauma, and meta-narratives.
The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature
An important regional outlet that publishes poetry, short
fiction, drama, literary criticism, reviews, bibliography, interviews, profiles and artwork.
Selected works are available on the journal’s web site.
British Columbia
The Vancouver Stories: West Coast Fiction from Canada’s Best
Writers
The stories in this collection take place in Vancouver
and are written by Pauline Johnson, Emily Carr, Alice Munro, Ethel Wilson and Malcolm Lowry,
William Gibson, Timothy Taylor, Zsuzsi Gartner, and Madeline Thien.
PR 9198.3 .V3
V36 2005
Stacks
reviewed & updated 26 May 2021 | compiled by Agatha Barc, MI