This guide covers various types of literature (fiction, drama, and poetry) from various regions across Canada ranging from early European to contemporary authors. The guide is a general subject guide, but may be of interest to students in ENGL 228, 240, 354, 356, 358, 360, 361, and/or 362, as well as other courses and disciplines. The home page is where users will find general resources, then each page is separated geographically to highlight titles about and by authors from those regions. Special topic pages that span geographies may also be added.
"This up-to-date reference book brings together 300 leading Canadianists to look at literature in Canada from a variety of perspectives. In over 2000 entries, acknowledging Canada's cultural plurality, the Encyclopedia discusses literature in English and French, and also in such other languages as Yiddish, Spanish, Haida and Cree; authors and their work; related literary and social issues; professional institutions that play a role in the lives of Canadian writers; and the major historical and cultural events that have shaped Canada." - University of Toronto Press
"Tomson Highway's From Oral to Written is a study of Native literature published in Canada between 1980 and 2010, a catalogue of amazing books that sparked the embers of a dormant voice. In the early 1980s, that voice rose up to overcome the major obstacle Native people have as writers: they are not able to write in their own Native languages, but have to write in the languages of the colonizer, languages that simply cannot capture the magic of Native mythology, the wild insanity of Trickster thinking. From Oral to Written is the story of the Native literary tradition, written - in multiple Aboriginal languages, in French, and in English - by a brave, committed, hard-working, and inspired community of exceptional individuals - from the Haida Nation on Haida Gwaii to the Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island." - Summary
"Readers are often surprised to learn that black writing in Canada is over two centuries old. Ranging from letters, editorials, sermons, and slave narratives to contemporary novels, plays, poetry, and non-fiction, black Canadian writing represents a rich body of literary and cultural achievement. The Black Atlantic Reconsidered is the first comprehensive work to explore black Canadian literature from its beginnings to the present in the broader context of the black Atlantic world. " - Description
"Fourteen critical essays examine the scope of Canadian identity from various walks of life, analyzing the works of such nationally and internationally renowned authors as Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Jane Urquhart, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Marie-Célie Agnant, Dany Laferrière, Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, Aritha van Herk, and Madeleine Thien." - Salem Press
"The first collection of critical essays devoted to the study of English-Canadian literary anthologies brings together the work of thirteen prominent critics to investigate anthology formation in Canada ... Specific essays focus on anthologies as national metaphors, the controversies surrounding early literary collections, representations of First Nations peoples in anthologies, and the ways in which various editors have understood exploration narratives. In addition, the collection examines the representation of women in Canadian anthologies, the use of anthologies as teaching tools, and the creation of some very odd Canadian anthologies along the way." - Description
"An important critical study of Canadian literature, placing internationally successful anglophone Canadian authors in the context of their national literary history. While the focus of the book is on twentieth-century and contemporary writing, it also charts the historical development of Canadian literature and discusses important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors. The chapters focus on four central topics in Canadian culture: Ethnicity, Race, Colonisation; Wildernesses, Cities, Regions; Desire; and Histories and Stories." - Description
"As one of the country’s leading editors and publishers for 40 years, he coaxed modern classics out of some of Canada’s finest minds, and then took to telling his own stories in his first memoir, Stories About Storytellers... Now in Across Canada by Story, Gibson brings new stories about Robertson Davies, Jack Hodgins, W.O. Mitchell, Alistair MacLeod, and Alice Munro, and adds lively portraits of Al Purdy, Marshall McLuhan, Margaret Laurence, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Margaret Atwood, Wayne Johnson, Linwood Barclay, Michael Ondaatje, and many, many others." - Description
"The second edition of the acclaimed Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature has been thoroughly updated with more than 340 new entries on new writers, new books, and extended entries on established authors. In keeping with the original, entries cover fiction, prose, poetry, drama, prominent writers, literary magazines, publishers, and more general topics. From The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz to the Rebel Angles, Sandra Birdsell to Eric Wright, Caribbean-Canadian literature to War literature, this completely revised edition is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Canadian literature." - Oxford Reference
"A History of Canadian Literature looks at the work of writers and the social and cultural contexts that helped shape their preoccupations and direct their choice of literary form. W.H. New explains how - from early records of oral tales to the writing strategies of the early twenty-first century - writer, reader, literature, and society are interrelated." - Summary
"The American Western in Canadian Literature examines over a century of the development of the Canadian Western as it responds to the American Western, to evolving literary trends, and to regional, national, and international change. Beginning with Indigenous perspectives on the genre, it moves from early manifestations of the Western in Christian narratives of personal and national growth, and its controversial pulp-fictional popularity in the 1940s, to its postmodern and contemporary critiques, pushing the boundary of the Western to include Northerns, Northwesterns, and post-Westerns in literature, film, and wider cultural imagery." - Description
"Censorship in Canadian Literature is an essential text for scholars of Canadian literature as well as for anyone concerned with contemporary debates about censorship and civil rights." - Description
"This fascinating study explores a remarkable ethnic-Canadian literature in close textual and contextual terms for the first time. It lays a groundwork for future comparative research in the field of ethnic Canadian studies, and challenges assumptions about cultural identity and human experience of the "new." " - Description
"This book examines the cultural work of space and memory in Canada and Canadian literature, and encourages readers to investigate Canada within its regional, national, and global contexts. It features seven chapters in English and five in French, with a bilingual introduction. The contributors invite us to recognize local intersections that are so easily overlooked, yet are so important. They reveal the unities and fractures in national understanding, telling stories of otherness and marginality and of dislocation and un-belonging." - Summary
"First full-length investigation into Canadian literary medievalism as a discrete phenomenon." - Book Description
"This book presents a rich body of evidence to illustrate the extent to which Canadians have been producing avant-garde art since the start of the twentieth century.Betts explores the radical literary ambitions and achievements of three different nodes of avant-garde literary activity: mystical revolutionaries from the 1910s to the 1930s; Surrealists/Automatists from the 1920s to the 1960s; and Canadian Vorticists from the 1920s to the 1970s." - Description
"Producing Canadian Literature: Authors Speak on the Literary Marketplace brings to light the relationship between writers in Canada and the marketplace within which their work circulates. Through a series of conversations with both established and younger writers from across the country, Kit Dobson and Smaro Kamboureli investigate how writers perceive their relationship to the cultural economy - and what that economy means for their creative processes." - Summary
Use these databases to find information by and about Canadian authors, literary works, reviews and critiques, as well as historic and modern Canadian culture. Databases may contain books, news, magazines, academic journals, videos, and reviews.
New to using library research databases or need a refresher? Check out our online videos and how-to's. Make sure to also review the next page in this guide "How to Search for Canadian Lit". Questions - reach out to a UFV Librarian.
Canadian literature related titles (some available in print and/or online):
