As Grant demonstrates, quite apart from furnishing a highly revealing self-portrait of their author, the letters are compelling for their imaginative and expressive power, as well as for the perceptive commentary they offer on universal human themes. Through a subtle exploration of van Gogh’s contrastive style of thinking and his fascination with the notion of imperfection, Grant illuminates …
Known for his exploration of the relationship between Buddhism and violent ethnic conflict in modern Sri Lanka, as well as his contribution to the study of Northern Ireland and the complex relationships among religion, literature, and ethnicity, Grant provides the reader with an analysis of the widespread rise of religious extremism across the globe. Referencing Plato, Van Gogh, Jesus, and the …
The current political climate of confrontation between Islamist regimes and Western governments has resulted in the proliferation of essentialist perceptions of Iran and Iranians in the West. Such perceptions do not reflect the complex evolution of Iranian identity that occurred in the years following the Constitutional Revolution (1906–11) and the anti-imperialist Islamic Revolution of 1979.…
As critic Diana Brydon has argued, contemporary Canadian writers are “not transcending nation but resituating it.” Drawing together themes of gender and sexuality, trauma and displacement, performativity, and linguistic diversity, Selves and Subjectivities offers an exciting new contribution to the multivocal dialogue surrounding the Canadian sense of identity.
In Northern Love, Paul Nonnekes proposes a conception of love suggestive of a distinctive model of Canadian masclinity. He pursues debates in psychoanalysis and cultural theory in relation to two representative male characters in novels by Rudy Wiebe (A Discovery of Strangers) and Robert Kroetsch (The Man from the Creek).
Technology, a word that emerged historically first to denote the study of any art or technique, has come, in modernity, to describe advanced machines, industrial systems, and media. McCutcheon argues that it is Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein that effectively reinvented the meaning of the word for modern English. It was then Marshall McLuhan’s media theory and its adaptations in Cana…
Challenging neocolonialist stereotypes, these critical excursions into Iranian literature and film reveal the limitations of collective identity as it has been configured within and outside of Iran. Through the examination of works by, among others, the iconic female poet Forugh Farrokhzad, the expatriate author Goli Taraqqi, the controversial memoirist Azar Nafisi, and the graphic novelist Mar…
Fletcher was a voracious reader of works in many languages and although he was oriented toward Britain, his writing notably reflects a gaze fixed on a horizon much further away. His work therefore stands in contrast to the tendency of later Canadian writers, who focus inward on the nation, and on issues of Canadian identity. His work as a surveyor allowed him to travel across the country, obser…
In Platonic Occasions, Richard Begam and James Soderholm reflect upon a wide range of thinkers, writers and ideas from Plato, Descartes and Nietzsche to Shakespeare, the Romantics and the Moderns—from Evil, Love and Death to Art, Memory and Mimesis. The dialogues suggest that Percy Shelley was right when he claimed “We are all Greeks,” and yet what have we learned about the initiatives of…
This book calls for an investigation of the ›borderlands of narrativity‹ — the complex and culturally productive area where the symbolic form of narrative meets other symbolic logics, such as data(base), play, spectacle, or ritual. It opens up a conversation about the ›beyond‹ of narrative, about the myriad constellations in which narrativity interlaces with, rubs against, or morphs i…