1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910826471803321

Autore

Goldman Marlene <1963->

Titolo

DisPossession : haunting in Canadian fiction / / Marlene Goldman

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Montreal ; ; Ithaca, : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2012

ISBN

0-7735-3950-6

1-283-58396-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (383 p.)

Disciplina

813.540937

Soggetti

Ghosts in literature

Spirit possession in literature

Supernatural in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Part one The Haunted Nation: Explorer and Settler-Invader Amnesia and the Spectral Native -- 1 Coyote's Children and the Canadian Gothic: Sheila Watson's The Double Hook and Gail Anderson-Dargatz's The Cure for Death by Lightning -- 2 Dispossession and the Rule of Primogeniture in John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Cartwright -- Part two Transnational Haunting: The Ghosts of the Diaspora -- 3 Jane Urquhart's Away : Magic Realism and the Ghosts of Celticism -- 4 'Cloth Flowers That Bleed': Haunting, Hysteria, and Diaspora in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace -- 5 'The spirits call she and make their display in she': The Trope of Possession in the Work of Dionne Brand -- Part three and Repair Ghosts and the Cycle of Reparation -- 6 Ghost Play: The Use of Transitional Phenomena in Thomas King's Truth and Bright Water -- Conclusion: Toward an Ethics of Haunting.

Sommario/riassunto

Much of Canada's contemporary fiction displays an eerie fascination with the supernatural. In DisPossession, Marlene Goldman investigates the links between spectral motifs and the social and historical influences that have shaped Canada. Incorporating both psychoanalytic and non-traditional methods of literary analysis, Goldman explores the ways in which spectral fictions are an expression of definitive Canadian experiences such as the clashes between invading settler and indigenous populations, the losses incurred by immigration and



diaspora, and the alienation of the female body. In so doing, Goldman unearths some of the "ghosts" of Canadian society itself - old tensions and injustices that continue to haunt ethnic and gender relations. An important contribution to the discussion of the challenges posed by the Gothic to dominant literary, political, and social narratives, DisPossession asserts that Canadian spectral fictions have the power to alter accepted versions of Canadian history by invoking and troubling the process of generating collective memories.