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Literary Criticism Canadian

You Can't Get There From Here

The Past as Present in Small-Town Ontario Fiction

by (author) Ryan Porter

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2019
Category
Canadian, General, General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781487504243
    Publish Date
    Apr 2019
    List Price
    $68.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781487519759
    Publish Date
    Apr 2019
    List Price
    $68.00

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Description

Rather than reading small-town representations in Canadian literature as portraits of a parochial past or a lost golden age, this book claims that they are best understood as sophisticated statements on the effects of modernity in an ever-more cosmopolitan world. In Ontario, as urbanization increased over the past century, small towns became a popular literary trope, and Ryan Porter argues that literary small towns are reflections, and even sublimated explorations, of contemporary life.

 

Referencing the theories of heritage scholars, who view popularly understood pasts as constructions shaped by changing sensibilities, You Can’t Get There from Here argues that the literary small-town Ontario past is malleable, consisting of attempts to come to terms with the present in which the narrators find themselves. The book focuses on four key Ontario authors – Stephen Leacock, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, and Jane Urquhart – as well as many secondary authors, and links the readings to much broader trends in actual Ontario towns and in popular culture.

About the author

Ryan Porter is Professor of Technical Communication at Algonquin College.

Ryan Porter's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"Ryan Porter’s insightful study, You Can’t Get There From Here: The Past as Present in Small-Town Ontario Fiction, observes the extent to which the canonical rural Ontario writing that participates in the small-town myth is produced from an urban vantage point."

 

 

<em>American Review of Canadian Studies </em>