TY  - BOOK
AU  - Kertzer,Jonathan
TI  - Worrying the Nation: Imagining a National Literature in English Canada 
T2  - Theory / Culture
SN  - 9780802043030
AV  - PR9185.5.N27 K47 1998eb
U1  - 810.9/358 
PY  - 1998///]
CY  - Toronto : 
PB  - University of Toronto Press, 
KW  - Canadian literature
KW  - History and criticism
KW  - National characteristics, Canadian, in literature
KW  - Nationalism in literature
KW  - LITERARY CRITICISM / Canadian
KW  - bisacsh
N1  - restricted access
N2  - How can a national literature in English-Canada be possible if Canadians cannot agree on who we are? This is the central question that Jonathan Kertzer 'worries' over in his book, Worrying the Nation: Imagining a National Literature in English Canada. The book is a critical fretting over the possibility of a national literature when the very idea of the nation as a viable conceptual/literary category has been called into question.Kertzer begins the book with survey of three competing discourses - literature, nation, and history - and how they converge and diverge. He then examines Herder's and Hegel's legacy of romantic historicism as it has affected Canadian literature. To illustrate his worry over national literature, he presents an analysis of some flawed attempts at poetic nation-building, specifically in Oliver Goldsmith's The Rising Village, E.J. Pratt's Towards the Last Spike, and Dennis Lee's Civil Elegies. In addition to these examples, Kertzer shows that alternative models of sociability are presented in the recent fiction of Joy Kogawa and Daphne Marlatt.Worrying the Nation is very much a tract for these turbulent times. Jonathan Kertzer has produced a highly sophisticated analysis of Canadian literary writing and its role in national culture
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781442683693
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781442683693/original
ER  -