<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Two recent anthologies of Canadian writing – <italic>Refuse: CanLit in Ruins</italic> and <italic>Resisting Canada: An Anthology of Poetry</italic> – reflect stances of resistance to mainstream institutional understandings of Canadian writing culture. They highlight recent scandals in academia and in literary communities, as well as highlighting the voices of Indigenous and women writers. These stances echo earlier forms of cultural revolution in Canada, in particular the <italic>Refus global</italic> manifesto, which provoked conventional Quebec society in the late 1940s. This paper contrasts these forms of refusal with a period in the 1950s and 1960s when influential Jewish writers, including Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton, took a counter-cultural stance while appearing in mainstream venues offered to them by CBC television and radio.</p>
</abstract>

Two recent anthologies of Canadian writing – Refuse: CanLit in Ruins and Resisting Canada: An Anthology of Poetry – reflect stances of resistance to mainstream institutional understandings of Canadian writing culture. They highlight recent scandals in academia and in literary communities, as well as highlighting the voices of Indigenous and women writers. These stances echo earlier forms of cultural revolution in Canada, in particular the Refus global manifesto, which provoked conventional Quebec society in the late 1940s. This paper contrasts these forms of refusal with a period in the 1950s and 1960s when influential Jewish writers, including Leonard Cohen and Irving Layton, took a counter-cultural stance while appearing in mainstream venues offered to them by CBC television and radio.

On Refusing Canada, Canlit and More: National and Literary Identity in All Its Varieties

Studia Anglica Posnaniensia

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Two recent anthologies of Canadian writing – Refuse: CanLit in Ruins and Resisting Canada: An Anthology of Poetry – reflect stances of resistance to mainstream...

On Refusing Canada, Canlit and More: National and Literary Identity in All Its Varieties

Publié en ligne: 13 mars 2021

Pages: 291 - 301

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/stap-2020-0014

Mots clés
Canadian literature, CanLit, resistance, Jewish writers, anthologies, CBC

© 2020 Norman Ravvin, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

On Refusing Canada, Canlit and More: National and Literary Identity in All Its Varieties

Publié en ligne: 13 mars 2021

Pages: 291 - 301

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/stap-2020-0014

Mots clésCanadian literature, CanLit, resistance, Jewish writers, anthologies, CBC

© 2020 Norman Ravvin, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Mots clés
Canadian literature, CanLit, resistance, Jewish writers, anthologies, CBC