Can. Lit.: Transatlantic, Transcontinental, Transcultural

Recent changes in the demography of Canadian society are mirrored in the transformation of the Canadian Imaginary, which has fed a diversity of literary texts including historical meta-fiction and life-writing, particularly productive forms in contemporary Canadian literature. Instead of the earlier preoccupation with constructing a national collective identity, writers of diverse ethnic backgrounds and scholars claiming the entry of Canadian literature into the post-national phase have shaped both the production and reception of texts currently perceived as representative of Canadian literature. The new project, which builds on earlier research on the recovery of transatlantic memories by members of allophone groups rooted in Europe, seeks to address the question of how the transatlantic heritage in conjunction with transcontinental interaction and transcultural encounters have reshaped the Canadian Imaginary (using the latter term shorn of its psychoanalytical denotation), and how this process has affected literary practice and creativity in contemporary Canada. This goal necessitates a more inclusive discussion of texts by spokespersons of various ethnic groups from Europe, and a consideration of allophone and Anglophone renditions of the experience of migration and acculturation in Canada, for instance by early Ukrainian newcomers and contemporary Mennonites not yet taken into account in the earlier project ( Illia Kyriak for the former, Miriam Toews and Di Brandt for the latter) . It will juxtapose their `life writings` based on their heritage, and the revisions of official history from the angle of the marginalized, with selected pertinent texts by writers of Scandinavian or Icelandic ancestry, for instance, L. G. Salverson, W. D. Valgardson and D. Arnason. Taking into account the collective experiences of Canadian citizens of Asian origin (Michael Ondaatje and Rohinton Mistry) and their role as catalysts for the articulation of muted European perceptions, the project proposes to relate the complex phenomenon of recovering the transatlantic heritage in Canadian writing to continental trends. It seeks to consider the issue of border crossings in mimetic texts (e.g. by Clarke Blaise and Carol Shields) also originating or set across the US border, thus introducing a transcontinental dimension along the north-south axis. The project also addresses the increasing hybridity and the transcultural features of Canadian texts stimulated by such encounters made possible by the current liberal immigration policy of the country. It will receive a major impetus from an interdisciplinary field trip involving more than a dozen Canadian academics at six universities and eight creative writers willing to convene workshops and mini-symposia for the 24 faculty and advanced students from Vienna, including six prospective young researchers for this project. The project, some of whose aspects have been explored in articles both by the applicant and future members of his team, will thus attempt a panorama of the literary and cultural scene in Canada, encapsulated in a sequence of texts which permit some critics to regard Canada as a true laboratory of the future, a country which through waves of migration and cultural interaction seems to anticipate global trends impacting on Europe.

The project Canadian Literature: Transatlantic, Transcontinental, Transcultural, which took its departure from insights gained in a project provisionally completed in 2006 on Transatlantic Accommodations and the Construction of New Collective Identities in Anglophone Canadian Literature aimed at investigating the consequences of the dramatic demographic changes in Canadian society since the reform of the immigration laws and of globalization as mirrored in contemporary Canadian literature. In addition to the analysis of the narrative tradition fed by the experiences of settlers from originally marginalized European ethnic groups, the significance of the cultural impact across the border along the 49th parallel was to be studied. Similarly, the results of cultural blending resulting from trans-Pacific immigration with ensuing cross-fertilization and the genesis of hybrid literary texts were to be considered, and thus the field of research of the project expanded fundamentally.