A Good Insight
Nov. 12th, 2002 11:15 amI'm writing this note to myself so that I don't forget it. It applies to my Honours thesis.
(Oh, yes. I had a meeting with Dr. MacLaine and he was quite pleased with my progress to date, looks forward to the section on "Barometer Rising," et cetera.)
There's is a progression, in the three novels (Ringuet's Thirty Acres, MacLennan's Barometer Rising, Atwood's Surfacing): In Ringuet's traditional Canada, the culture is a typical Western peasant culture that stands out only by virtue of its isolated in a peculiarly dynamic continent; in MacLennan's Nova Scotia, a class hierarchy loosely linked to ethnicity does exist, but group barriers and identities are much more fluid than either in French Canada or in Nova Scotia's source societies; in Atwood's Canadian Shield, the narrator comes from the dynamic core of Canada (southern Ontario), but arrives in a marginal French Canadian-populated village deep in the wilderness and comes to term with the problems of late 20th century global capitalism by herself. A kind of Stoic meditation on the self, after Foucault.
Thoughts?
(Oh, yes. I had a meeting with Dr. MacLaine and he was quite pleased with my progress to date, looks forward to the section on "Barometer Rising," et cetera.)
There's is a progression, in the three novels (Ringuet's Thirty Acres, MacLennan's Barometer Rising, Atwood's Surfacing): In Ringuet's traditional Canada, the culture is a typical Western peasant culture that stands out only by virtue of its isolated in a peculiarly dynamic continent; in MacLennan's Nova Scotia, a class hierarchy loosely linked to ethnicity does exist, but group barriers and identities are much more fluid than either in French Canada or in Nova Scotia's source societies; in Atwood's Canadian Shield, the narrator comes from the dynamic core of Canada (southern Ontario), but arrives in a marginal French Canadian-populated village deep in the wilderness and comes to term with the problems of late 20th century global capitalism by herself. A kind of Stoic meditation on the self, after Foucault.
Thoughts?