This is a dystopian social science fiction novel and morality tale. The novel is set in the year 1984, a fictional future in which most of the world has been destroyed by unending war, constant government monitoring, historical revisionism, and propaganda. The totalitarian superstate Oceania, ruled by the Party and known as Airstrip One, now includes Great Britain as a province. The Party uses the Thought Police to repress individuality and critical thought. Big Brother, the tyrannical ruler of Oceania, enjoys a strong personality cult that was created by the party's overzealous brainwashing methods. Winston Smith, the main character, is a hard-working and skilled member of the Ministry of Truth's Outer Party who secretly despises the Party and harbors rebellious fantasies.
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick With extraordinary relevance and renewed popularity, George Orwell’s 1984 takes on new life in this edition. “Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. It is, above all, a way of asserting power.”—The New Yorker In 1984, London is a grim city in the totalitarian state of Oceania where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be. Lionel Trilling said of Orwell’s masterpiece, “1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present.” Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.
Profiles in Canadian Literature is a wide-ranging series of essays on Canadian authors. Each profile acquaints the reader with the writer's work, providing insight into themes, techniques, and special characteristics, as well as a chronology of the author's life. Finally, there is a bibliography of primary works and criticism that suggests avenues for further study. "I know of no better introduction to these writers, and the studies in question are full of basic information not readily obtainable elsewhere." -U of T Quarterly.
Reference Sources for Canadian Literary Studies offers the first full-scale bibliography of writing on and in the field of Canadian literary studies. Approximately one thousand annotated entries are arranged by reference genre, with sub-groupings related to literary genre.
The first major historical collection of French-Canadian short stories in translation, spanning a century and a half, this anthology offers twenty-two stories that will entertain, charm, and often disturb. At the same time they reveal the development of the French-Canadian short-story form, and present many of the leading writers of French Canada.
Northrop Frye's Canadian Literary Criticism examines the impact of Frye's criticism on Canadian literary scholarship as well as the response of Frye's peers to his articulation of a 'Canadian' criticism.
This new volume of the Literary History of Canada covers the continuing development of English-Canadian writing from 1972 to 1984. As with the three earlier volumes, this book is an invaluable guide to recent developments in English-Canadian literature and a resource for both the general reader and the specialist researcher. The contributors to this volume are Laurie Ricou, David Jackel, Linda Hutcheon, Philip Stratford, Barry Cameron, Balachandra Rajan, Robert Fothergill, Brian Parker, Cynthia Zimmerman, Frances Frazer, Edith Fowke, Bruce G. Trigger, Alan C. Cairns, Douglas Williams, Carl Berger, Shirley Neuman, Raymond S. Corteen, and Francess G. Halpenny.
As one of the formative periods in Canadian history, the late nineteenth century witnessed the birth of a nation, a people, and a literature. In this study of Canada's first 'school' of poets, D.M.R. Bentley combines archival work, including extensive research in periodicals and newspapers, with close readings of the work of Charles G.D. Roberts, Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman, William Wilfred Campbell, Duncan Campbell Scott, and Frederick George Scott. Bentley chronicles the formation, reception, national and international successes, and eventual disintegration (after the 1895 'War Among the Poets') of the Confederation Group, whose poetry forever changed the perception and direction of Canadian literature. With the aid of biographical, political, and sociological analyses, Bentley's literary history delineates the group's political, aesthetic, and thematic dispositions and characteristics, and contextualizes them not only within Canadian history and politics, but also within contemporary intellectual and literary currents, including Romantic nationalism, 'Canadianism', and poetic formalism. Bentley casts new light on the poets' commonalities - such as their debt to Young Ireland, their commitment to careful workmanship, and their participation in the American mind-cure movement - as well as on their most accomplished and anthologized poems from 1880 to 1897. In the process, he presents a compelling case for the literary and historical importance of these six men and their poems in light of Canada's cultural and political past, and defends their right to be known as Canada's first poetic fraternity at a time when Canada was striving to achieve literary and national distinction. The Confederation Group of Canadian Poets, 1880-1897 is an erudite and innovative work of literary history and critical interpretation that belongs on the bookshelf of every serious scholar of literary studies.
La presente tesis se centra en el género novelístico en lengua inglesa como paradigma de la Identidad literaria canadiense con el fin de analizar su construcción restrictiva por medio de la Recuperación de contribuciones de mujeres y autores étnicos que han sido bien relegadas o bien infravaloradas como agentes literarios relevantes. Esta investigación abarca un periodo que comprende desde la publicación de la primera novela canadiense en inglés, The History of Emily Montague de Frances Brooke en 1769, hasta 1904 año en el que la obra de Sara Jeannette Duncan titulada The Imperialist vió la luz; es decir, desde los comienzos del género en inglés hasta la primera novela modernista. La primera parte engloba el marco teórico general del Nuevo Historicismo, el Feminismo y los Estudios Étnicos puesto que resaltan el papel crucial de la historización de la literatura en la creación de tradiciones e identidades literarias, e impulsan una visión crítica tanto de la producción literaria de mujeres y escritores étnicos como de su consideración. La segunda parte se centra en la historia, tradición e identidad literarias canadienses. Por medio de la novela, se analiza el proceso de antologización de la literatura canadiense en inglés a través de un estudio detallado sobre la presencia/ausencia de autoras y autores étnicos en antologías publicadas entre 1920 y 2004. También se incluyen las contribuciones de críticos/as feministas y/o étnicos puesto que cuestionan axiomas establecidos en la historia, tradición e identidad canadienses y posibilitan el acceso a las obras de estos escritores/as alternativos cuyos diversos sentidos identitarios, de otro modo silenciados, son revelados. Precisamente estos diferentes sentidos de la identidad son el eje de la tercera parte. Desde 1769 a 1904 existen: una primera novela frecuentemente infravalorada escrita Frances Brooke; novelas olvidadas de autoras con gran reconocimiento como Susanna (Strickland) Moodie; escritoras relevantes en la ficción juvenil como es el caso de Agnes Maule Machar, Margaret Murray Robertson y Margaret Marshall Saunders; contribuciones tempranas de autores étnicos como Martin Robinson Delany y Winnifred Eaton; así como novelistas de éxito de la talla Agnes Early Fleming, Lily Dougall, Susan Frances Harrison y Sara Jeannette Duncan. Dándoles voz y resaltando su relevancia, este trabajo demuestra que la literatura canadiense temprana está plagada de autoras y autores étnicos inteligentes, poderosos y reconocidos cuyas aportaciones deben ser re-consideradas si se pretende seguir manteniendo el carácter multicultural y no patriarcal de las letras canadienses. Estas novelas de un autor afroamericano y residente temporal en Canadá, de una mujer canadiense de ascendencia chino-inglesa, y un amplio espectro de mujeres inmigrantes o nativas pone de manifiesto no sólo que Canadá cuenta con un pasado literario sólido y forjado desde la diversidad sino que cuestiona el hecho de que esta herencia literaria todavía necesita ser recuperada.
