Tomeki
Cover of Survival

Essai sur la littérature canadienne

By Margaret Atwood

3.67 (3 Ratings)
16 Want to read1 Currently reading3 Have read

Publish Date

1987

Publisher

Boréal

Language

eng

Pages

292

Description:

"'Survival' is the most startling book ever written about Canadian literature. It is ... a book of criticism, a manifesto, and a collection of personal and subversive remarks. Margaret Atwood begins by asking: 'what have been the central preoccupations of our poetry and fiction?' Her answer is twofold: 'survival and victims.' Atwood applies this thesis in twelve brilliant, witty and impassioned chapters. From Moodie to MacLennan to Blais, from Pratt to Purdy to Newlove, from Godfrey to Gibson, she lights up familiar books in wholly new perspectives." The themes are: survival; nature the monster; animal victims; early people (indians and eskimos); ancestral totems (explorers and settlers); family portrait: masks of the bear; failed sacrifices (the reluctant immigrant); the casual incident of death; the paralyzed artist; ice women vs. earth mothers; Quebec: burning mansions; and, jail-breaks and recreations.