Past Calls

Snap, Crackle, and Pop: Rethinking Early Canadian Popular Literature

Organizer: Tobi Kozakewich, Queen’s University

In his study of the popular genre of romance, The Secular Scripture (1976), Northrop Frye argues that whereas ‘elite’ literature looks backward and occasionally abroad, privileging tradition and erudite obscure allusions, popular literature looks around and ahead. As a result, it is the latter that typically “indicates where the next literary developments are most likely to come from.” Despite anticipating the development of literature in this way, however, popular literature has consistently been relegated to the margins of literary canons and historical narratives rather than being awarded a place of special prominence. Exceptions to this commonplace exist – in our Canadian context, for example, the persistence of Anne Shirley as a literary and cultural icon belies any notion of a deprecation of popular literature writ large – but those exceptions themselves raise questions about the viability and value of popular texts: do the exceptions simply prove the rule? Do they problematize it? How are the texts that remain in the cultural and literary consciousness different from those that quickly disappear from critical purview? (How) Is it possible to reconfigure the parameters of the Canadian literary canon to acknowledge the contributions of ‘popular’ writers and their best-selling but ephemeral texts? Recently, critics such as Clarence Karr and Lorraine York have turned a critical eye to questions pertaining to best-selling Canadian authors, including the ways that such authors contribute to the construction of ‘Canadian Literature’ both at home and abroad. Early Canadian popular writers – including but certainly not limited to Ralph Connor, Mazo de la Roche, Nellie McClung, L. M. Montgomery, Gilbert Parker, Robert Stead, and Arthur Stringer – potentially represent ideal case studies of the ways that popular literature has shaped the Canadian canon as well as the ways that, as a whole, it is at once ephemeral and preserved, and both marginalized and canonized, insofar as our temporal distance from the writers and their texts allows us to trace their reception history and to assess critically their merits, aesthetic and otherwise.

Submissions to both kozakewich@cogeco.ca and thodd@cogeco.ca by Nov. 15, 2008.

Where Would We Be Without our Supporting Cast?: Cultural Workers in Early Canadian Literary Society

Organizer: Thomas Hodd, Guelph-Humber

In the introduction to their Special Issue on “Canadian Literature and the Business of Publishing” (2000) Jennifer Andrews and John Ball posit that “When it comes to the literary text as a written object, we are usually more than willing to examine material, political, historical, and cultural contexts; when considering the text as a published object, however, we behave surprisingly like New Critics.” While the focus of Andrews and Ball is chiefly on the production and dissemination of the text, a concept addressed more generally in recent book history criticism, there is little scholarship being done that seeks to understand questions of promotion and support for early Canadian literary culture. Whether through influential editors such as Goldwin Smith or William Arthur Deacon, cultural journalists such as Sara Jeannette Duncan, publishers like Lorne Pierce or influential theatre men like Roy Mitchell, Canada has employed a host of cultural workers who played vital roles in the shaping of our early literary culture. This panel invites papers along any genre line which address issues, figures, or forms of cultural production that played a significant role in the dissemination, critical or otherwise, of early Canadian literary culture, texts, or authors. Topics may include, but are not limited to the following: newspaper, magazine, or journal editors; influential book reviewers; early drama critics; theatre company directors or producers; national or regional publishers; cultural philanthropists; book buyers or literary agents.

Submissions to both thodd@cogeco.ca and kozakewich@cogeco.ca by Nov. 15, 2008.