Challenging Canada
Dialogism and Narrative Techniques in Canadian Novels
- Publisher
- McGill-Queen's University Press
- Initial publish date
- Sep 2003
- Category
- Canadian, Canadian
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780773571297
- Publish Date
- Sep 2003
- List Price
- $110.00
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Description
Challenging Canada is the first book-length study to bring a Bakhtinian approach to bear on Canadian literature. Gabriele Helms develops a cultural narratology to argue that the contemporary Canadian novels in English considered in this book challenge dominant constructions of Canada from positions of difference and resistance, inscribing previously oppressed and silenced voices through dialogic relations. She makes Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of dialogism amenable to textual analysis and problematizes its ideological forces by emphasizing elements of struggle and conflict. Challenging Canada rejects dialogism as a normative liberal pluralism and understands the inequality between voices as historically and socially constructed.