Canadian Gothic: Literature, History, and the Spectre of Self-Invention

Description

In Canadian Gothic, Cynthia Sugars explores the origins and history of the Canadian gothic tradition, tracing the ways that the gothic genre has been reinvented for a specifically Canadian context. Sugars demonstrates how, from very early on, the Gothic has held a precarious position in Canadian literature. Canada had long been perceived as an empty terrain unhaunted by a historical tradition and incapable of inspiring ghosts or gothic tales. Sugars argues instead that many Canadian writers have created a distinctly Canadian Gothic, one expressed in a postcolonial context and found in early aboriginal and diasporic writings. Among the authors she discusses are Dionne Brand, David Chariandy, Wayson Choy, Hiromi Goto, Suzette Mayr, and Michael Ondaatje. Cover Back Cover Acknowledgements Introduction:Settled Unsettlement; or, Familiarizing the Uncanny 1 Here There Be Monsters: Wilderness Gothic and Psychic Projection 2 Haunted by a Lack of Ghosts: Gothic Absence and Settler Melancholy 3 French-Canadian Gothic: Excess as Emplacement 4 Local Familiars: Gothic Infusion and Settler Indigenization 5 Playing fort da with History: Settler Postcolonial Gothic 6 Strangers Within: Unsettling the Canadian Gothic 7 Indigenous Ghost-Dancing: At Home on Native Land Conclusion: The Spectre of Self-Invention Notes Works Cited Index