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Institut für Anglistik Institut für Anglistik

Dr. Geoffrey Vernon Davis Dr. Geoffrey Vernon Davis

609773

English Literature and Culture: Canadian Fiction

SE 2

7,5

Block

semestral

Englisch

The aim of this seminar is to familiarise ourselves with four major works of recent Canadian fiction, which will give us some idea of the innovative literary practice of contemporary Canadian writers.

The selection purposely comprises highly disparate works – Margaret Atwood’s experiment in historical fiction based on a nineteenth-century murder case; Joy Kogawa’s culturally syncretic but also highly political account of the forced removals of Japanese Canadians from the west coast of Canada during the Second World War; Brian Moore’s engagement with Christian and native belief systems against the background of missionary attempts to convert indigenous people in seventeenth-century Canada; and Michael Ondaatje’s postmodern fiction set in the Libyan desert during the Second World War. The novels by Moore and Ondaatje were successfully filmed by major movie directors, and we shall take the opportunity to view those films. Do not be put off by the excessive length of Atwood’s novel!

Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (London: Bloomsbury, 1996) Joy Kogawa, Obasan (1981; Markham, Ontario: Penguin Canada, 1983) Brian Moore, Black Robe (1985; Harmondsworth & New York, 1997); Film by Bruce Beresford (1991). Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (London: Bloomsbury, 1992); Film by Anthony Minghella (1996).

Anmeldevoraussetzung/en: Masterstudium: keine Diplom- und Lehramtsstudium: abgeschlossener 1. Studienabschnitt Entspricht im Diplomstudium (343): SE 2: English Literature/Culture Entspricht im Lehramtsstudium (344): SE 2: English Literature/Culture
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