Much of Canada's contemporary fiction displays an eerie fascination with the supernatural. In DisPossession, Marlene Goldman investigates the links between spectral motifs and the social and historical influences that have shaped Canada.

Incorporating both psychoanalytic and non-traditional methods of literary analysis, Goldman explores the ways in which spectral fictions are an expression of definitive Canadian experiences such as the clashes between invading settler and indigenous populations, the losses incurred by immigration and diaspora, and the alienation of the female body. In so doing, Goldman unearths some of the "ghosts" of Canadian society itself - old tensions and injustices that continue to haunt ethnic and gender relations.

An important contribution to the discussion of the challenges posed by the Gothic to dominant literary, political, and social narratives, DisPossession asserts that Canadian spectral fictions have the power to alter accepted versions of Canadian history by invoking and troubling the process of generating collective memories.

Marlene Goldman is professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto and the author of DisPossession: Haunting in Canadian Fiction.

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