Medievalism in English Canadian Literature: From Richardson to Atwood

First full-length investigation into Canadian literary medievalism as a discrete phenomenon.

The essays in this volume consider what is original and distinctive about the manifestation of medievalism in Canadian literature and its origins and its subsequent growth and development: from the first novel published in Canada written by a Canadian-born author, Julia Beckwith Hart's St Ursula's Convent (1824), to the recent work of the best-selling novelist Patrick DeWitt (Undermajordomo Minor, published in 2015). Topics addressed include the strong strain of medievalist fantasy itself in the work of the young-adult author Kit Pearson, and the longer novels of Charles de Lint, Steven Erikson, and Guy Gavriel Kay; the medievalist inclinations of Archibald Lampman and W.W. Campbell, well-known nineteenth-century Canadian poets; and the often-studied Wacousta by John Richardson, first published in 1832. Chapters also cover early Canadian periodicals' engagement with orientalist medievalism; and works by twentieth-century writers such as the irrepressible Earle Birney, the witty and intellectual Robertson Davies, and the fascinating and learned Margaret Atwood.