The postmodern novel was a surprisingly and often poorly understood phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s, in which many artists explored issues of how art represents the world. These works are characterized by a certain self-reflexivity, a determination to foreground the process of artistic creation, and the previously often backgrounded role played by the artist. Linda Hutcheon's groundbreaking exploration of postmodernism in Canadian fiction, first published in 1988, provides a clear and fascinating explanation of this tendency towards self-consciousness and self-parody in many of the novels of this period. Her original choice of a cover design by artist Nigel Scott is a clue to the self-reflexive nature of postmodern art, and is reproduced again in this new edition of Hutcheon's excellent study.

The Canadian Postmodern examines the theory and practice of postmodernism as seen through both contemporary cultural theory and the writings of Audrey Thomas, Michael Ondaatje, Robert Kroetsch, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Jack Hodgins, Aritha Van Herk, Leonard Cohen, Susan Swan, Clark Blaise, George Bowering, and others.

A new preface by Aritha van Herk looks back on Hutcheon's key contributions to the field of postmodern fiction in Canada - and how this phenomenon looks some twenty years later.

Linda Hutcheon holds the rank of University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. A specialist in postmodernist culture and in critical theory, on which she has published nine books, she has also worked collaboratively in large projects involving hundreds of scholars.

Linda Hutcheon's profile page

Aritha van Herk teaches Creative Writing, Canadian Literature and Contemporary Narrative. Her novels include Judith, The Tent Peg, No Fixed Address (nominated for the Governor General's Award for fiction), Places Far From Ellesmere (a geografictione) and Restlessness. Her critical works, A Frozen Tongue (ficto-criticism) and In Visible Ink (crypto-frictions) stretch the boundaries of the essay and interrogate questions of reading and writing as aspects of narrative subversion. With Mavericks: an Incorrigible History of Alberta (winner of the Grant MacEwan Author's Award) van Herk ventured into new territory, transforming history into a narratological spectacle. That book frames the new permanent exhibition that opened at the Glenbow Museum in 2007. van Herk is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and is active in Canada's literary and cultural life, writing articles and reviews as well as creative work. She has served on many juries, including the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. She is well known in the broader community of the city, the province, and the country as a writer and a public intellectual.

Aritha van Herk's profile page

"Hutcheon has produced an impressive criticism which withstands the toll of time."

--The Prairie Journal